Problems With Society Quotes

We want to change our surroundings, but we don't want to change ourselves. We are so quick to point out others' flaws, but can't admit our own. We complain about the problems with society, but don't offer a solution or acknowledge that we could be a part of the problem. And once we feel like we've outgrown a problem, instead of sharing what we've learned from our experience, we act so enlightened and better than the next man. ~ Kaiylah Muhammad

The problem of society today: An absolute lifestyle of entitlement. People gauge everything by "feeling", meaning whatever they feel like doing or whatever they don't feel like doing. Passion is valued over dedication. Instant gratification is prized over true fulfillment. They don't know that more than feeling; intuition is the better key. They don't know that more than passion; fulfillment and dedication are the better keys. True passion will produce dedication and ultimately - fulfillment. If not, then it should not be called passion; it should just be called a lack of self control/ immaturity. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I learned from the Macarturos. I had never been at a table with a labor organizer and a playwright and a performance artist and an anthropologist and a human rights lawyer. Usually at most gatherings, it's all writers. But suddenly I was at a table with all these different people and I learned from each of them, learned from the work they're doing, learned new ways to solve my problems. ~ Sandra Cisneros

I have problems with machines which aren't gestural. ~ Luc Ferrari

The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

My goal is one individual gold. I know how hard it is: you have to have a good day; there can also be some problems with the weather. ~ Marit Bjorgen

We can't blame children for occupying themselves with Facebook rather than playing in the mud. Our society doesn't put a priority on connecting with nature. In fact, too often we tell them it's dirty and dangerous. ~ David Suzuki

By all accounts, John Frankenheimer was singularly obsessed with The Manchurian Candidate, a film that, according to Daniel O'Brien, the director regarded "as his first truly personal project, feeling that the story made an all too valid point regarding the political manipulation and conditioning of American society. ~ James Kaplan

But now the rub for man. If sex is a fulfillment of his role as an animal in the species, it reminds him that he is nothing himself but a link in the chain of being, exchangeable with any other and completely expendable in himself. Sex represents, then, species consciousness and, as such, the defeat of individuality, of personality. But it is just this personality that man wants to develop: the idea of himself as a special cosmic hero with special gifts for the universe. He doesn't want to be a mere fornicating animal like any other-this is not a truly human meaning, a truly distinctive contribution to world life. From the very beginning, then, the sexual act represents a double negation: by physical death and of distinctive personal gifts. This point is crucial because it explains why sexual taboos have been at the heart of human society since the very beginning. They affirm the triumph of human personality over animal sameness. With the complex codes for sexual self-denial, man was able to impose the cultural map for personal immortality over the animal body. He brought sexual taboos into being because he needed to triumph over the body, and he sacrificed the pleasures of the body to the highest pleasure of all: self-perpetuation as a spiritual being through all eternity. This is the substitution that Roheim was really describing when he made his penetrating observation on the Australian aborigines: "The repression and sublimation of the primal scene is at the bottom of tot ~ Ernest Becker

If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay - if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure - why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be against his neighbor in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilization would be done away with. We should be quarreling, abusing, avoiding one another. Our houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid high-stepping carriage horses - all the delights of life, I say, - would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles and avoid those whom they dislike and abuse.
Whereas, by a little charity and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough: we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal unhanged - but do we wish to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when we meet. If his cook is good we forgive him and go and dine with him, and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus trade flourishes - civilization advances; peace is kept; new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week; and the las ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

There are two ways to look at most problems ... 'Oh Crap!' or, 'Good Information!,' and our choice will give us good information on how to deal with problems in the future. ~ Bill Crawford

People have to struggle to live and, frequently, to live in an undignified way. One cause of this situation, in my opinion, is in the our relationship with money, and our acceptance of its power over ourselves and our society. ~ Pope Francis

Unfortunately, we live our life in public, so any weight gain or pimple is a national story. I don't get this obsession with weight. It's not only Hollywood; it's our society. ~ Eva Longoria

Bingeing is such an emotionally frenetic activity that no other concerns can exist in the same space. It is a hell that people who are food-sensitive are familiar with; and, because it is known, it is therefore not so terrifying as some of the problems that are outside our control. Problems like divorce, illness, death. ~ Geneen Roth

As Indigenous peoples, we know there is more to the world. We know spirits exist. We know as women, because we're especially attuned to this kind of knowledge, that spirits exist and have a presence in our lives. Some of us are gifted and can communicate with the spirit world. Not everyone has that gift and can perceive the borders between the living and the dead and our society actively discourages us of exploring the knowledge of what many of us have already always known in our cultures. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Permissiveness cannot sustain true liberty for long ... In Sodom they probably had absolute free speech, but nothing worth saying! On the other hand, an otherwise permissive society, which tolerates almost everything, usually will not tolerate speech that challenges its iniquity. Evil is always intolerantly preoccupied with its own perpetuation. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature. ~ Dennis Prager

I found the role model to inspire me to handle such situations with more grace, maturity, and, most important of all, results...

I reread Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and I realized I had found my hero in Atticus Finch...

It hit me like a thunderbolt. You see, Atticus knows everything Huck knows. He knows society is racist. He recognizes the violence, hypocrisy, injustice, and ignorance of society. He knows he is going to lose.

But Atticus does not light out for the territory. He goes into the courtroom to fight the fight as best as he can, because it is what he believes in. He doesn't do it because of the law, or the rules, or what people will think. He has his own code, and he lives by it as well as he can.

I still cry when I think about this. My classroom is my courtroom. I am going to lose more than I win. There are many times when, despite my efforts, I will lose children to poverty, ignorance, and, most tragically, a society that embraces mediocrity...

I've made plenty of mistakes since rediscovering Atticus, but I've always been able to hold my head up to my students. Atticus showed me the way. ~ Rafe Esquith

Our society in general devalues the 'she' - qualities that are associated with the feminine that are found in all of us. As a result there's this imbalance and this distortion and it's hindering our progress. ~ Emma Watson

I had one simple idea about telling friends about arts and technology events. People in the community suggested everything else to us, and that's our theme. We're really run by the people who use the site. We just run the infrastructure, and help out with problems. ~ Craig Newmark

An elementary school student asked me the NOT "politically correct" question, "Is an idiot smarter than a moron?" I had to Google it because I was afraid to respond in today's PC society and didn't want to offend him, his parents, or anyone else. Here's what I found.

Technically, a moron is smarter than an idiot. An imbecile is also smarter than an idiot.

Although today the words are considered insulting and derogatory, prior to the 1960s they were widely used as actual psychology terms associated with intelligence on an IQ test.

An IQ between:
00-25 = Idiot
26-50 = Imbecile
51-70 = Moron

Explaining all of this to a nine year old with an IQ of 130 made me feel like society has turned all adults into one of the above, myself included.

When I told him that I'm afraid to openly say it, the nine year old said, "Adults are idiots! ~ Ray Palla

My views in my early 20's and kept me separate from those around me. Those views were all about making myself feel significant by bringing other people down. I thought having special problems made me special. Problems don't make people special. Solving them does.
My views created an Us-vs-Them perspective of the world. Solving my problem required finding more Us people and to avoid Them. I wanted a special club of Us people. The problem was that all the Us people I found thought that their problems were more unique than the other Us people. We never bonded. We were still separating ourselves by one-upping each other about the uniqueness of our problems.
The upside to Us-Vs-Them is that we feel special being Us. Unfortunately feeling special doesn't outweigh the significant downside.
There will always be more Them than Us
There has to be. Otherwise, the exclusively club of Us wouldn't be exclusive. So to maintain the exclusivity, we make more rules in our head to keep others out. We become more dependent on less people and are devastated when those people don't reciprocate by valuing our friendship with the same mindfulness.
Finding more people to connect with seems beyond our control because we automatically put everyone in the Them column and wait for people to work their way into the Us column. The problem is no one wants to have to prove themselves in order to become friends. We end up waiting and waiting. ~ Corin

The notion, a debatable one, is that the man who knows the problems necessarily knows the answers.

This book has not been successful if it has not suggested some big-league problems, such as:

(1) Should our financial machinery be scrapped?
(2) Should it be further tinkered with, and if so, how much further?
(3) Is capitalism doomed?
(4) What active stock selling under five dollars looks hot just now for a quick turn to pay for the Buick the wife just bought?


There isn't an assistant instructor in economics in any faculty who can't answer these and similar questions rapidly and categorically, and if that is not enough there are a million laymen eager to do so. So I don't feel that my vote is much needed. ~ Fred Schwed Jr.

It's interesting that when these individuals choose-and it is their choice always-to endure voluntary amputations for their own personal benefit, society professes itself shocked and disapproving. Yet this same society respects the concept that any individual should risk total annihilation in war, subject to the judgement of any superior officer at all and for purposes ranging from a promotion for the lieutenant to higher profits for the bullet company. Hell, they don't just respect that idea, they flat out expect it. And they'll shoot your ass if you don't go along with it.
-Arturo in response to critics ~ Katherine Dunn

Confronted with the unhappy facts of exclusion, we sometimes reassure ourselves by telling stories: the poor boys who made it, theblacks who became a "credit to their race," the women elected to high office, the handicapped who made "useful contributions" to our society ... Just as we believe in the self-sufficient family, we also believe that any child with enough grit and ability can escape poverty and make a rewarding life. But these stories and beliefs clearly reflect the exceptions. ~ Kenneth Keniston

Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages. ~ Angela Davis

Usually with a couple of these shots the word 'Goodnight' would show up on their forehead, but he was still on his feet, but backed up and then I battered him with a flurry of combinations: right, left, right, right, right and a sweet right hand and he went down. For good measure, I booted him in the head and turned around and walked fast in to the pub away from the scene. ~ Stephen Richards

As a society, we are obsessed with eating properly, yet many of us are poorly nourished. We cannot rely on external "experts" to guide us. "Experts" differ widely, and by listening to them instead of ourselves, we relinquish our power to notice, choose, and decide what is right for us. ~ Marcey Shapiro

Economists use the word consume to mean "utilize economic goods," but the Shorter Oxford Dictionary's definition is more appropriate to ecologists: "To make away with or destroy; to waste or to squander; to use up." The economies that cater to the global consumer society are responsible for the lion's share of the damage that humans have inflicted on common global resources. ~ Alan Thein Durning

We have imagined that a white hospital train with a white Diesel engine has taken you through many a tunnel to a mountainous country by the sea. You are getting well there. But you cannot write because your fingers are so very weak. Moonbeams cannot hold even a white pencil. The picture is pretty, but how long can it stay on the screen? We expect the next slide, but the magic-lantern man has none left. Shall we let the theme of a long separation expand till it breaks into tears? Shall we say (daintily handling the disinfected white symbols) that the train is Death and the nursing home Paradise? Or shall we leave the picture to fade by itself, to mingle with other fading impressions? But we want to write letters to you even if you cannot answer. Shall we suffer the slow wobbly scrawl (we can manage our name and two or three words of greeting) to work its conscientious and unnecessary way across a post card which will never be mailed? Are not these problems so hard to solve because my own mind is not made up yet in regard to your death? My intelligence does not accept the transformation of physical discontinuity into the permanent continuity of a nonphysical element escaping the obvious law, nor can it accept the inanity of accumulating incalculable treasures of thought and sensation, and thought-behind-thought and sensation-behind-sensation, to lose them all at once and forever in a fit of black nausea followed by infinite nothingness. Unquote. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I got tired of seeing otherwise innocent young kids from all walks of life getting criminal records for, in effect, doing nothing more than millions of other people in society were doing with alcohol. ~ Ron Clarke

We use pandas and eagles and things. I'd love to see a wilderness society with an angry-looking wolverine as their logo. ~ E. O. Wilson

If all human beings in a population either are declared equal in their native strengths and rights, or else are persuaded to believe this, then the eventual realization of the hard truth of the matter that no amount of redistribution of wealth and status can ever obliterate inequality in one form or another must often take the form of covetousness mixed with resentment: that is, envy. ....The only remedy for the poisons created by egalitarianism in a society is emphatically not ever-greater dosages of political redistribution of wealth and status, for such dosages worsen the disease, producing fevers of avarice and envy. No, the sole remedy for this pathology is the introduction and diffusion of individual liberty as a sovereign value. Respect for individual liberty makes it possible for human beings to live in and be aware of differentiation a condition that, in biology, is recognized for what it is, the basis of progressive evolution, but which, in its social manifestation, receives no such recognition because of both the inequality intrinsic to all social differentiation and the ideology of equality that has spread so widely and so devastatingly in the twentieth century. ~ Robert A. Nisbet