Social Evolution Quotes

If you put on a lousy production with white actors, it's lousy. There is a problem, or can be, at this stage of our social evolution, with mixing the casts. It may not be a question of race so much as class. You would rarely find a black man in a high executive position where he was swinging his weight around. ~ Howard Schultz

What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. Certainly many of our most satisfying avocations today consist of making something by hand which machines can usually make more quickly and cheaply, and sometimes better. Nevertheless I must in fairness admit that in a different age the mere fashioning of a machine might have been an excellent hobby... Today the invention of a new machine, however noteworthy to industry, would, as a hobby, be trite stuff. Perhaps we have here the real inwardness of our own question: A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority.

This, however, is serious: Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an 'exercise' undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbel ~ Aldo Leopold

People do not consciously and rationally choose the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that are not under rational human control. ~ Theodore Kaczynski

Earthmen may even rule at Trantor for a generation, but their children will become Trantorians, and in their turn will look down upon the remnant on Earth. ~ Isaac Asimov

Social evolution is demonstrated by movement towards unity, not separatism. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

From Marx, I received the concept of what human society is; otherwise, someone who hasn't read about it, or to whom it hasn't been explained, it's as though they were set down in the middle of a forest, at night, without knowing which way north is, or south, east or west. Marx told us what a society is and the history of its evolution. Without Marx, you can't formulate any argument that leads to a reasonable interpretation of historical events - what the tendencies are, the probable evolution of a humanity that has not yet completed its social evolution. ~ Fidel Castro

Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people. ~ Steven M. Greer

...we cannot fail to recognise the influence which the progressive control over natural forces exerts on the social relationships between men, since men always place their newly won powers at the service of their aggressiveness, and use them against one another. ~ Sigmund Freud

In spite of all these disquieting triumphs in the field of natural science, it's astonishing how little man has learned about himself, and how much there is to learn. How little we know about this brain which made social evolution possible, and of the mind. How little we know of the nature and spirit of man and God. We stand now before this inner frontier of ignorance. If we could pass it, we might well discover the meaning of life and understand man's destiny. ~ Wilder Penfield

And Habermas: mutual understanding in unrestrained communicative action unfolded by rationality is the omega point of individual and social evolution itself. ~ Ken Wilber

In addition, unlike Othello, whose profession of arms is socially honorable, Shylock is a professional usurer who, like a prostitute, has a social function but is an outcast from the community. But, in the play, he acts unprofessionally; he refuses to charge Antonio interest and insists upon making their legal relation that of debtor and creditor, a relation acknowledged as legal by all societies. Several critics have pointed to analogies between the trial scene and the medieval Processus Belial in which Our Lady defends man against the prosecuting Devil who claims the legal right to man's soul. […] But the differences between Shylock and Belial are as important as their similarities. The comic Devil of the mystery play can appeal to logic, to the letter of the law, but he cannot appeal to the heart or to the imagination, and Shakespeare allows Shylock to do both. In his "Hath not a Jew eyes…" speech in Act III, Scene I, he is permitted to appeal to the sense of human brotherhood, and in the trial scene, he is allowed to argue, with a sly appeal to the fear a merchant class has of radical social evolution:

You have among you many a purchased slave
Which like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,

which points out that those who preach mercy and brotherhood as universal obligations limit them in practice and are prepared to treat certain classes of human beings as things. ~ W.H. Auden

We are all regularly presented, day after day, with bad news, the worst, and I think our minds are more and more set into attitudes of foreboding and depression. But is it possible that all the bad things going on – and I don't have to list them, for we all know what they are – are a reaction, a dragging undertow, to a forward movement in the human social evolution that we can't easily see? Perhaps, looking back, let's say in a century or two centuries, is it possible people will say, 'That was a time when extremes battled for supremacy. The human mind was developing very fast in the direction of self-knowledge, self-command, and as always happens, as always has to happen, this thrust forward aroused its opposite, the forces of stupidity, brutality, mob thinking'? I think it is possible. I think that this is what is happening. ~ Doris Lessing

It's not the 'nice' guy who brings about real social change. 'Nice' guys look nice because they're conforming. It's the 'bad' guys, who only look nice a hundred years later, that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

If you accept the existence of advertising, you accept a system designed to persuade and to dominate minds by interfering in people's thinking patterns. You also accept that the system will be used by the sorts of people who like to influence people and are good at it. No person who did not wish to dominate others would choose to use advertising, or choosing it, succeed in it. So the basic nature of advertising and all technologies created to serve it will be consistent with this purpose, will encourage this behaviour in society, and will tend to push social evolution in this direction. ~ Jerry Mander

The long, slow turn of world-time as the geologist has known it, and the invisibly moving hour hand of evolution perceived only yesterday by the biologist, have given way in the human realm to a fantastically accelerated social evolution induced by industrial technology. So fast does this change progress that a growing child strives to master the institutional customs of a society which, compared with the pace of past history, compresses centuries of change into his lifetime. I myself, like others of my generation, was born in an age which has already perished. At my death I will look my last upon a nation which, save for some linguistic continuity, will seem increasingly alien and remote. It will be as though I peered upon my youth through misty centuries. I will not be merely old; I will be a genuine fossil embedded in onrushing man-made time before my actual death. ~ Loren Eiseley

YEARS AGO I WORKED ON A GOVERNMENT TASK force studying fatherhood and healthy families. As we met in DC, I learned one of the main causes of the breakdown of the American family was the Industrial Revolution. When men left their homes and farms to work on assembly lines, they disconnected their sense of worth from the well-being of their wives and children and began to associate it with efficiency and productivity in manufacturing. While the Industrial Revolution served the world in terrific ways, it was also a mild tragedy in our social evolution. Raising healthy children became a woman's job. Food was no longer grown in the backyard, it was bought at a store with money earned from the necessary separation of the father. Within a few generations, then, intimacy in family relationships began to be monopolized by females. ~ Donald Miller

The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion. ~ Thorstein Veblen

Genuine art and business are the ultimate partnership toward catalyzing social evolution and well-being. ~ Vanna Bonta

The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed. It was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quartenary, when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as then social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny. Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by committing some evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the prevaricator ends up being, without mercy or pity, twice what he deserved. ~ Jose Saramago

We must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken off. ~ Jack London

I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written' ... It evolves in the minds of a thinking community. ~ Aldo Leopold

Nevertheless, an iron rule exists in genetic social evolution. It is that selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, while groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. The victory can never be complete; the balance of selection pressures cannot move to either extreme. If individual selection were to dominate, societies would dissolve. If group selection were to dominate, human groups would come to resemble ant colonies. ~ Edward O. Wilson

Trade has played a vital role in the social evolution of humankind. It allowed people to specialise, which raises both skill levels and efficiency. It brought people from different lands together, co-operating rather than competing over resources. ~ Julian Baggini

Challenging boundaries is not simply social rebellion. It is the catalyst of social evolution. When systems go unchallenged, they grow complacent and corrupt. Raising generation after generation of rule followers and conformists may be more convenient for society, but it inevitably leads to tyranny and, ultimately, revolution. Raising independent thinkers, conscious objectors, and peaceful activists creates a social balance that can endure. Peaceful parenting, then, by its very nature, is socially responsible because it creates the catalysts of social evolution that protect our society from the complacency and corruption that lead to tyranny and revolution. ~ L.R. Knost

In the past our glorious visions of the future - heaven, paradise, nirvana - were thought to happen after death. The newer thought is that we do not have to die to get there. We are not speaking here of life after death in some mythical heaven, but life more abundant in real time in history. We are speaking of the next stage of our social evolution. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

Planetary Citizenship reveals a vital blueprint for a compassionate and sustainable world. Hazel Henderson and Daisaku Ikeda make a formidable team stepping forward as humanity's guides in this great transition to the next stage of social evolution. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

Those persons who are burning to display heroism may rest assured that the course of social evolution will offer them every opportunity. ~ Havelock Ellis

And then there was that stupid social networking system, how it had just seemed like the most convenient vessel for the average narcissist. How I'd despised those who couldn't eat a meal without prodding through their glowing portable Internet devices, searching for some tasty piece of gossip, or perhaps just something to complain about.
But that social network had become an overnight epidemic - I'd watched as the daily ways in which we'd lived our lives became molded to fit this shallow instrument. It was a vast change - whether it was social evolution or de- evolution, I wasn't quite sure; but before I knew it, by society's standards, it was I that had become the social leper. ~ Noah Fregger

The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical events have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars. Without ~ Jack London

With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny. ~ Jose Saramago

Give us but the chance and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man. ~ Isaac Asimov

A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other. ~ William James

I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other. ~ Chris Patten

The Muslim Brotherhood is not a party of preachers and missionaries but rather of divine enforcers," he wrote. "Its mission is to blot out, by force if necessary, oppression, moral anarchy, social disorder, and exploitation so as to finish the so-called divine role of self-styled gods and replace evil with good. 'Fight them,' the Koran says, 'until there is no more oppression, and all submission is made to God alone. ~ Mark Bowden

The very fact we use the term "cold-blooded" as a synonym for "heartless" should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles. Do not judge other species by your own social norms. ~ Becky Chambers

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future. ~ John Maynard Keynes

For heaven's sakes, every parent in America is checking social media and every employer is as well, but our government can't do it. ~ Carly Fiorina

Friends are great, except, I never know what to do with them. I see other people and it all seems so natural. They laugh and talk and make plans to talk and laugh some more at a later date. I would probably throw a fry at them and hope they were distracted enough not to notice me running away. ~ Airicka Phoenix

It was also necessary to answer those who objected to the fact that the revolution itself had need of an administrative
and repressive apparatus. There again Marx and Engels are largely used to prove, authoritatively, that the proletarian
State is not a State organized on the lines of other states, but a State which, by definition, is in the process of
withering away. "As soon as there is no longer a social class which must be kept oppressed ... a State ceases to be
necessary. The first act by which the [proletarian] State really establishes itself as the representative of an entire
society - the seizure of the society's means of production - is, at the same time, the last real act of the State. For the
government of people is substituted the administration of things. . . . The State is not abolished, it perishes." The
bourgeois State is first suppressed by the proletariat. Then, but only then, the proletarian State fades away. The
dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary - first, to crush or suppress what remains of the bourgeois class;
secondly, to bring about the socialization of the means of production. Once these two tasks are accomplished, it
immediately begins to wither away. ~ Albert Camus

The field of human relations in Freud's sense is similar to the market - it is an exchange of satisfaction of biologically given needs, in which the relationship to the other individual is always a means to an end but never an end in itself. ~ Erich Fromm

I've always been a social network retard, even before there was a social network. People would say, "You want to go to this party and do some networking?" ~ Lewis Black

I stood among the heaps of dead. They lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels and the substance had leaked out. The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a social habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different, then. Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul--does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. ~ Robert Leckie

His office was on the third floor of the Humanities & Social Sciences Building, just down the hall from the interview room. On the office door was a Peanuts cartoon of Lucy in the psychiatrist's booth with the little DOCTOR is IN sign. Professor Mitchell, a man on the cutting edge of humor. ~ Rick Riordan

You must however pay attention to the fact that we don't only lose time to lateness. We also lose time to jokes, gossip, empty talks, sleep on duty, social media etc. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The Olympics start on Friday, and Russia is implementing the most intensive security in Olympics history. During the games, the government will monitor every email, every social media message, and listen in on every phone call. In fact, people are even comparing Russia to the United States, that's how bad it is. ~ Jay Leno

Rudolf Valentino looks very much alive and he looks up ladies dresses as they sadly pass him by. ~ Ray Davies

Evolution of the mind is not a revolution. It is the experience of the past and understanding the true reality of life to lead a happy and healthy life ~ Venu CV

We met at a local restaurant.
She tweeted from her Smartphone ,"Socializing is so liberating compared to being hung on Social media all the time".
I liked her tweet and asked for the Bill. ~ Ketan Waghmare

Madeline traveled with ease through dozens of overlapping social circles, making both lifelong friends and lifetime enemies along the way; probably more of the latter. ~ Liane Moriarty

Giving voice to marginalised characters is extremely important to me. I want to explore the pain of disenfranchisement, the social strata and boundaries we create and how to make them more permeable. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such. ~ Simone Weil

In spite of Mr. Poe's fame, the pair made me feel out of sorts, and sad. In one of the busiest cities in the world, they seemed to exist on a bleak island of their own making, their backs turned against the social tide lapping at the battered door. ~ Lynn Cullen

Over time, a noisy lifestyle and stress make you old. The stress, noise and rush that often accompany working life, family life and social life can be too much for your nervous system and brain, which also need rest and cleansing. ~ Thorbjorg Hafsteinsdottir

I come from a working-class family. They're the people I know and the people I love, I guess. I do not write about them for political reasons, but because, as I see it, most interesting things - social, political, emotional - take place there. It's a bottomless well for an author like me. ~ Per Petterson

A man's social rank is determined by the amount of bread he eats in a sandwich. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty. ~ Emanuel Ax

You'll find that people often use the excuse "it was the norm" when discussing racism, homophobia, and anything else in our history they are trying to absolve themselves of. Saying that something was "a norm" of the past is a way not to have to deal with its ripple effects in the present. It removes the fact that hate doesn't just stop because a law or the time changed. Folks use this excuse because they are often unwilling to accept how full of phobias and -isms they are themselves - or at least how they benefit from social structures that privilege them. ~ George M. Johnson

The notion of the Internet as a force of political and social revolution is not a new one. As far back as the early 1990s, in the early days of the World Wide Web, there were technologists and writers arguing forcefully that the Internet was destined to become the most important tool for cultural change in human history. ~ Jamais Cascio

There's this whole other element of film scoring, which is the social and psychological side of how you're dealing with people ... And that is not always in sync with what's right for the picture. ~ Marco Beltrami

No successes we might have are guaranteed to last as long as industrial civilization stands. Conversely, most of our losses are effectively permanent. Extinct species cannot be resurrected. Overdrawn aquifers or clear-cut forests will not return to their original states on timescales meaningful to humans. The destruction of land-based cultures, and the deliberate impoverishment of much of humanity, results in major loss and long-­term social trauma. With sufficient action, it's possible to solve many of the problems we face, but if that action doesn't materialize in time, the effects are irreversible. ~ Aric McBay

Social media is not an end in itself. It's just another tool to reach people. ~ Simon Mainwaring

You might think you're connecting with your friends on Facebook but when was the last time you went out with your friends and asked them how they were doing? When was the last time you called them and prayed with them and really had a conversation? Go ahead and do those things (with social media). I get it. I really do. But if you're lacking the other things, that's when it's out of balance and you're not really connected. ~ Jeremy Camp

I'm going to do 'The Social Network Two: The Electric Boogaloo.' And I have a part in 'Beige Swan.' I'm going to be the lead, but I don't dance. I just do a lot of sitting down. It's too tiring to get up and dance around. That should be coming out in 20-never. ~ Amy Poehler

Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts. ~ Ian Fleming

The middles cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value. ~ Paul Fussell

People don't like us, my dear. The idea that someone who can play with their emotions, who can "mystically" get them to do certain things, makes them uncomfortable. What they do not realize - and what you must realize - is that manipulating is at the core of our social interaction. (...) Think about it. What is a man doing when he seeks the affection of a young lady? Why, he is trying to manipulate her to regard him favorably. What happens when two old friends sit down for a drink? They tell stories, trying to impress each other. Life as a human being is about posturing and influence. This isn't a bad thing, in fact, we depend upon it. These interactions teach us how to respond to others. ~ Brandon Sanderson

America: It's a free country; that is if you can afford it. ~ Rythmic Karma

In some suburban schools, the curriculum is chock-full of rigorous A.P. courses and the parking lot glitters with pricey SUVs, but one doesn't have to look hard to find students who are starving themselves, cutting themselves, or medicating themselves, as well students who are taking out their frustrations on those who sit lower on the social food chain. ~ Alfie Kohn

Oh stupid, silly, awkward me;
Will I never, ever see?
People babble, speak, and talk;
All I can do is stand and gawk! ~ Margo T. Rose

True, the US Government does not have moral authority to ask for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred in final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka. This is so not just because of what they have done in Sri Lanka, but what they do all around the world. Certainly, the US enhanced their assistance in many ways during last decades to fight against the Tamil Tiger rebels. But does the Government of Sri Lanka have moral authority to deny an international investigation? The answer is no. ~ Nilantha Ilangamuwa

There has been a banking crisis, a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a geostrategic crisis and an environmental crisis. That's considerable in a country that's used to being protected. ~ Jean-Francois Cope

I like developing characters who I find to have interesting psychology. Like politics and sex, but I'm really looking at bigger social problems that interest me, and that I can obsess over for a while. ~ Mora Stephens

If they had won, all they'd have thought about was making more money, the upper class. Abendsen, he's wrong; there would be no social reform, no welfare public works plans - the Anglo-Saxon plutocrats wouldn't have permitted it." Juliana thought, Spoken like a devout Fascist. ~ Philip K. Dick

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. ~ Susan Cain

That generation really has to fight for a new political language, social movements, and alliances with students from other countries. They have to convince labor, parents, and the general public that the fight over higher education is a fight that benefits everyone in a sustainable democracy and not just faculty and students. ~ Henry Giroux

Whoever seeks to live by brain and pen alone is, at the beginning of such a career, treated as a sort of social pariah. ~ Marie Corelli

Nature, philosophy and social issues are the three things that always occupy my mind. You do not have any power over others but can only change yourself. ~ Pawan Kalyan

[O]ne could translate the 555 pages of The Social System into about 150 pages of straightforward English. The result would not be very impressive. ~ C. Wright Mills

It is no more informative to speak of self-efficacy in global terms than to speak of nonspecific social behavior ~ Albert Bandura

(When we force a smile, we activate facial muscles with our prefrontal cortex. But when we smile because we are in a good mood, our nerves are controlled by our limbic system, which activates a slightly different set of muscles. Our brains can tell the subtle difference between the two, which was beneficial for our evolution.) ~ Michio Kaku