Social Problems Quotes

Or we could change the definition in another way. We could remove the part of the definition that refers to "supernatural powers." Then sorcery and witchcraft would include beliefs that unknown persons harm others using techniques that cannot be demonstrated to be real or that are not observable. In the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy played on people's fears in the 1950s by claiming that the government and Hollywood were filled with Communists dedicated to overturning all that Americans hold dear. In the 1980s and 1990s, various supremacists blamed certain political factions and minorities for social problems and what they believed to be the degeneration of their nation's values. Will there be other witch hunts in the twenty-first century? ~ James Peoples

One sex of voice in public matters, and that we could in no way so increase the attention , the intelligence and the devotion which may be brought to the solution of social problems as by enfranchising our women . ~ Henry George

Of all the public services, education is the one I'm most interested in. You get a more dynamic economy, you deal with most social problems, and it's morally right. ~ George Osborne

Sacrifice is the most beautiful situation and solution for all social problems ~ Kartik Mehta

If you happen to live in Korea, you might always suffer from anger towards people in power, because of political and social problems. I felt gloomy under this social dictatorship. Looking back, I feel like I never saw a sunrise in Seoul. ~ Kim Hyesoon

Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims ~ Edmund Hillary

Optimism is America's birthright ... There is no social problem Americans
dare not attack. No problem, that is, except one: about marriage,
and marriage alone, we despair. ~ Maggie Gallagher

All critics have the responsibility to tease out the social ideas and social problems in a movie. I don't feel an obligation to do that because I'm black. ~ Wesley Morris

There is indeed a poetical attitude to be adopted towards all things, but all things are not fit subjects for poetry. Into the secure and sacred house of Beauty the true artist will admit nothing that is harsh or disturbing, nothing that gives pain, nothing that is debatable, nothing about which men argue. He can steep himself, if he wishes, in the discussion of all the social problems of his day, poor-laws and local taxation, free trade and bimetallic currency, and the like; but when he writes on these subjects it will be, as Milton nobly expressed it, with his left hand, in prose and not in verse, in a pamphlet and not in a lyric. This exquisite spirit of artistic choice was not in Byron: Wordsworth had it not. In the work of both these men there is much that we have to reject, much that does not give us that sense of calm and perfect repose which should be the effect of all fine, imaginative work. But in Keats it seemed to have been incarnate, and in his lovely ODE ON A GRECIAN URN it found its most secure and faultless expression; in the pageant of the EARTHLY PARADISE and the knights and ladies of Burne-Jones it is the one dominant note. It is to no avail that the Muse of Poetry be called, even by such a clarion note as Whitman's, to migrate from Greece and Ionia and to placard REMOVED and TO LET on the rocks of the snowy Parnassus. Calliope's call is not yet closed, nor are the epics of Asia ended; the Sphinx is not yet silent, nor the fountain of Castaly dry. For art i ~ Oscar Wilde

The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism - which foretells a coming change.

As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith. ~ Stefan Molyneux

One of the things I learned is that you've got to deal with the underlying social problems if you want to have an impact on crime - that it's not a coincidence that you see the greatest amount of violent crime where you see the greatest amount of social dysfunction. ~ Eric Holder

I have no problem with technological solutions to social problems. The key question for me is, 'Who gets to implement them?' and, 'What kinds of politics of reform do technological solutions smuggle through the back door?' ~ Evgeny Morozov

I'm never a fan of the sociopathic kind of reviewing, people who are sort of self-immolating and have social problems or whatever, and let it out in literary-criticism form. I just feel like book reviewing should be respectful and calm and not filled with bile. ~ Dave Eggers

Or as my dad always says: it only becomes a social problem when the working man joins in. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Most original viewers of the Mickey Mouse Club didn't face the crush of family and social problems children have today. ~ Annette Funicello

Feminism, which is supposedly for everybody, apparently has no place for conservative women. Why would feminists need to exclude entire swaths of the population? Because they know their ideology cannot stand up to challenges, they know they themselves do not understand it, and they know that to accomplish their goals they cannot allow discussion to occur....To pretend that your ideology is impenetrable and the obvious answer to modern social problems and then to turn around and exclude people from the discussion only creates more holes in the theories themselves and serves to demonstrate the liberal superiority complex. ~ Chris Sardegna

First, it is a commitment to particularism, to giving priority to the specificity of particulars, not to abstractions and generalities that divert our attention away from concrete realities. Idealizations tend to be partial and distorting, obscuring the heterogeneity and complexity of actual experiences and concrete practices, which is why they do not provide an adequate standpoint for the diagnosis of social problems and injustices. ~ Jose Medina

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

Big data is transitioning from a tool primarily for targeted advertising to an instrument with profound applications for diverse corporate sectors and for addressing chronic social problems. ~ Alec J. Ross

India can progress only by the reinforcement of the women. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. ~ Margaret Sanger

Business is the most powerful force in society. It has the highest potential for solving social problems. Once consumers saw examples of prosperous companies integrating social concerns into their business practices, they were emboldened to demand the same of other businesses. Businesses could no longer say it was impossible. ~ Ben Cohen

One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with the time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances. ~ Thomas Sowell

Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems. It follows, from this view, that these ecological problems cannot be understood, let alone solved, without a careful understanding of our existing society and the irrationalities that dominate it. To make this point more concrete: economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most serious ecological dislocations we face today - apart, to be sure, from those that are produced by natural catastrophes. ~ Murray Bookchin

Those who happen to have the right talents-should be economists and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians, and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed 'Do as you would be done by' into action. If that happened and if we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian solution for our own social problems pretty quickly. ~ C.S. Lewis

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

[beware that] many of what are called social problems are differences between the theories of intellectuals and the realities of the world - differences which many intellectuals interpret to mean that it is the real world that is wrong and needs changing. ~ Thomas Sowell

The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them. ~ Rudolf Virchow

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses. ~ Elizabeth Moon

It was a slow understanding that the lack of education in a country like Somalia creates these huge social problems. ~ Amanda Lindhout

I believe the only way we'll be able to solve infant mortality - and other huge social problems - is by designing solutions for those with the greatest intent to carry it out. ~ Jane Chen

I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing - the solution of the social problem is in liberty. ~ Frederic Bastiat

If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world's people. ~ Jacque Fresco

One day I shall write a little book of conduct myself, and I shall call it Social Problems of the Unsociable. And the root problem, beneath a hundred varying manifestions, is How to Escape. How to escape, that is, at those times, be they few or frequent, when you want to keep yourself to yourself. ~ Rose Macaulay

We have a problem and a a problem demands a solution. Problem and solution - these two terms are inseparably connected to each other. It means if a person has a problem there is a certain method - it could be mathematical, algebra - that you can apply to this problem. What you get out of that is the solution. With that the problem is over.

But it is not like that in human life. It is not like that with - now I am going to use the word myself - problems. Human problems, social problems, societal problems will never be solved... It is an illusion that some kind of problem will be solved. ~ Joseph Weizenbaum

Our modern conception of the average person is not a mathematical truth but a human invention, created a century and a half ago by two European scientists to solve the social problems of their era. ~ Todd Rose

Once we realize that government doesn't work, we'll know that the only way to improve government is by reducing its size - by doing away with laws, by getting rid of programs, by making government spend and tax less, by reducing government as far as we can. ~ Harry Browne

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire. ~ Oscar Wilde

Biologist Steven Rose points out that reductionist ideology not only hinders biologists from thinking adequately about the phenomena we wish to understand: it has two important social consequences: it serves to relocate social problems to the individual ... rather than exploring the societal roots and determinants of a phenomenon; and second, it diverts attention and funding from the social to the molecular. ~ David Eagleman

But the greatest human problems are not social problems, but decisions that the individual has to make alone. The most important feelings of which man is capable emphasise his separateness from other people, not his kinship with them. The feelings of a mountaineer towards a mountain emphasise his kinship with the mountain rather than with the rest of mankind. The same goes for the leap of the heart experienced by a sailor when he smells the sea, or for the astronomer's feeling about the stars, or for the archaeologist's love of the past. My feeling of love for my fellowmen makes me aware of my humanness; but my feeling about a mountain gives me an oddly nonhuman sensation. It would be incorrect, perhaps, to call it 'superhuman'; but it nevertheless gives me a sense of transcending my everyday humanity.

Maslow's importance is that he has placed these experiences of 'transcendence' at the centre of his psychology. He sees them as the compass by which man gains a sense of the magnetic north of his existence. They bring a glimpse of 'the source of power, meaning and purpose' inside himself. This can be seen with great clarity in the matter of the cure of alcoholics. Alcoholism arises from what I have called 'generalised hypertension', a feeling of strain or anxiety about practically everything. It might be described as a 'passively negative' attitude towards existence. The negativity prevents proper relaxation; there is a perpetual excess of adrenalin in the bloodstrea ~ Colin Wilson

The greatest predictor of social pathology in children is fatherlessness, greater even than poverty. In his book Fatherless Generation (Zondervan) John Sowers claims, "The most reliable predictor for gang activity and youth violence is neither social class nor race or education but fatherlessness." In Fatherless America (Basic Books) David Blankenhorn says, "It is no exaggeration to say that fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation. It is the engine driving our most urgent social problems". I am convinced that the damage to humanity caused by the epidemic of unfathered men and women is far greater than the damage caused by war and disease combined. ~ Craig Wilkinson

This is not an accident. Progressivism is a mindset that favors the use of aggressive government force to solve social problems. Prison is one of its main tools. Prison is the threat behind every progressive edict. If you don't directly merit prison by violating a criminal statute, you can earn prison by interfering with a government agent enforcing progressive policies or by ignoring a court order to obey the law. A large number of prisoners are incarcerated either because they violated a progressive drug law or because their illegal drug habit drew them into a criminal lifestyle. ~ James Ostrowski

The American family is not simply changing; it is getting weaker ... Family decline drives some of our most urgent social problems ... The heart of the family problem lies in the steady breakup of the two-parent home. ~ David Popenoe

Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cutbacks in basic social services, especially for young people, the elderly, people of color, and the impoverished.36 At this historical juncture there is a merging of violence and governance along with the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres that have provided the minimal conditions for democracy. This becomes obvious in the emergence of a surveillance state in which social media not only become new platforms for the invasion of privacy but further legitimate a culture in which monitoring functions are viewed as both necessary and benign. Meanwhile, the state-sponsored society of hyper-fear increasingly regards each and every person as a potential terrorist suspect. ~ Henry A. Giroux

Evidence is mounting that faith-based service programs are often more successful than other programs in correcting social problems. [It is wrong] for government to demand that religious nonprofits gut precisely that part of their program [funded through tax dollars] that makes them so effective. ~ Ronald J. Sider

The social problem of the twentieth century is whether civilized nations can restore themselves to sanity after their nineteenth-century aberrations of individualism and capitalism. ~ Albion Woodbury Small

Force, punishment, and violence are patriarchy's answer to conflicts and social problems. Patriarchy finds its ultimate expression in war. ~ Starhawk

If you look at people who seek a lot of care in American cities for multiple illnesses, it's usually people with a number of overwhelming illnesses and a lot of social problems, like housing instability, unemployment, lack of insurance, lack of housing, or just bad housing. ~ Paul Farmer

Lust for possession and greed has ravaged the soul of humanity like a great cancer, metastasizing throughout society in the form of a nouveau post-human, consumer hedonism. ~ Bryant McGill

The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Until society can be reclaimed by an undivided humanity that will use its collective wisdom, cultural achievements, technological innovations, scientific knowledge, and innate creativity for its own benefit and for that of the natural world, all ecological problems will have their roots in social problems. ~ Murray Bookchin

The economic and social problems would tend to become, like the military situation, more and more difficult as time went on and we became more and more isolated. ~ Eamon De Valera

In the West we are brainwashed into thinking that clinging to our personal rights and freedoms, while striving after things, is our ticket to happiness. In reality, it's making us miserable.

Several studies have revealed that, statistically speaking, America has one of the highest rates of depression (and other mental health disorders) in the world. On the other hand, these mental health studies suggest that Nigeria has one of the lowest rates of depression. Despite the fact that the average standard of living in America is roughly four times that of Nigeria, and despite the fact that Nigeria is a country with a multitude of social problems - including dehumanizing poverty, a serious AIDS epidemic, and ongoing civil strife - Nigeria has far less depression, per capita, than America.

What do Nigerians have that Americans lack?

Judging from the Nigerians I know, I'm convinced the main thing is a sense of community. Nigerians generally know they need one another. They don't have the luxury of trying to do life solo, even if they had the inclination to do so. Consequently, Nigerians tend to have a sense of belonging that most Americans lack, and this provides them with a sense of general satisfaction in life, despite the hardships they endure.

Many studies have shown that personal happiness is more closely associated with one's depth of relationships and the amount one invests in others than it is with the comforts one "enjoys." And thi ~ Gregory A. Boyd

While I would champion any campaign to support Muslim women who do not wish to cover. I would now also protest vigorously for the right of a woman to wear that covering, if it is what she wants and believes in. Ayatollah Khomeini and Jacques Chirac have much more in common than either of them would care to acknowledge. Each tried to solve overarching social problems by imposing his will on the bodies of women. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Voters, activists, and political leaders of the present day are in the position of medieval doctors. They hold simple, prescientific theories about the workings of society and the causes of social problems, from which they derive a variety of remedies – almost all of which prove either ineffectual or harmful. Society is a complex mechanism whose repair, if possible at all, would require a precise and detailed understanding of a kind that no one today possesses. Unsatisfying as it may seem, the wisest course for political agents is often simply to stop trying to solve society's problems. ~ Michael Huemer

People always say that Glasgow has had umpteen social problems but keeps finding ways of getting over its difficulties and transforming itself. Maybe, belonging to the city I'm able to renew myself too, and keep extending out into some new area. ~ Edwin Morgan

We may wonder how the ability to profit from land fosters social dysfunction, but once we realize the extent to which community wealth is privatized for personal gain, we also come to realize just how corrupt most societies actually are. Many social problems exist as a result of how our system misallocates wealth, not as a result of an unalterable human condition. ~ Martin Adams

When you prohibit failure, you kill innovation. ~ Dan Pallotta

The great religions are also, and tragically, sources of ceaseless and unnecessary suffering. They are impediments to the grasp of reality needed to solve most social problems in the real world. ~ Edward O. Wilson

The longer we spent on Tarawa the more Sylvia and I came to realize that to live on Tarawa is to experience a visceral form of bipolar disorder. There is the ecstatic high, when you find yourself swept away in a lagoonside maneaba rumbling to the frenzied singing and dancing of hundreds of rapturous islanders. And there are the crushing lows, when you succumb to a listless depression, brought about by the unyielding heat, sporadic sickness, pitiless isolation, food shortages, and the realization that so much of what ails Tarawa, the overpopulation and all its attendant health and social problems, need not be as bad as it is. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Innovative, bottom-up methods will solve problems that now seem intractable - from energy to poverty to disease. Science and technology, powered by the fuel of entrepreneurial energy, are the largest multipliers of resources we have to solve our many social problems. ~ Vinod Khosla

At the group consciousness level, you're often dedicated to continuing social problems such as war, brutality, and religious persecution, which originated in ancestral enmities that have existed for thousands of years. But it also comes right down to daily living. Families insist that you adopt their viewpoint, hate whom they hate, and love whom they love. You have blind allegiance to a company that may be making weapons of destruction, a concept to which you're normally opposed, but you do it anyway because "it's my job." Some policemen and soldiers victimize their fellow human beings by behaving worse than the criminals or so-called enemies they abhor so much. Our inhumanity to our fellow human beings is often justified on the grounds of a group-consciousness mentality. Members of gangs or societies will behave in horrid ways, spurred on by a group or clan mentality. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

We are conscious that religions cannot solve the economic, political and social problems of this earth. ~ Hans Kung

The extreme intellectual elegance of the proposal to legalize the distribution and consumption of drugs, touted as the solution to so many problems at once (AIDS, crime, overcrowding in the prisons, and even the attractiveness of drugs to foolish young people) should give rise to skepticism. Social problems are not usually like that. Analogies with the Prohibition era, often drawn by those who would legalize drugs, are false and inexact: it is one thing to attempt to ban a substance that has been in customary use for centuries by at least nine-tenths of the adult population, and quite another to retain a ban on substances that are still not in customary use, in an attempt to ensure that they never do become customary. Surely we have already slid down enough slippery slopes in the last thirty years without looking for more such slopes to slide down. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Changing Your Opinion
Think back to the low self-esteem statements you identified with, bearing in mind that, no matter how you came by your low opinion of yourself, you can change it. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." You own your self-image, and you can feel about yourself whatever you choose to feel. Throughout this book, there are exercises to help you change how you feel about yourself. And in the next chapter, we'll look at some ways to set social goals. For now, try repeating what Mrs. Roosevelt said: "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." Give yourself credit for seeking help with your social problems. You care about yourself, and that counts for a lot.
Social anxiety and low self-esteem go hand in hand. In fact, many people simplify so-called "shyness" as a self-esteem problem. The reality is, however, that poor self-esteem is a by-product of social anxiety. It is the social anxiety that comes first, not the other way around! Social failures cause anxiety, which causes avoidance, which causes low self-esteem. As a person's confidence dwindles, the fears become greater, until eventually the individual simply stops trying. With fewer and fewer opportunities for social interaction, there are also fewer opportunities to receive positive feedback. This combination of factors perpetuates low self-esteem, which cannot be replaced with a healthy self-image until the avoidant behavior c ~ Jonathan Berent

All stains of the society are born in the mind, and so is the detergent to clean them off. ~ Abhijit Naskar

He spoke a kind of ecclesiastical jargon; a debased rhetoric that explained nothing but brought the truth into disrepute. It begged all the questions and answered none. The massive structure of reason and revelation on which the church was founded was reduced to ritual incantation, formless, fruitless and essentially false. Peppermint piety. It deceived no one but the man who peddled it. It satisfied no one but old ladies and girls in green-sickness; yet it flourished most rankly where the Church was most firmly entrenched in the established order. It was the mark of accommodation, compromise, laxity among the clergy, who find it easier to preach devotion than to affront the moral and social problems of the time. It covered fatuity and lack of education. It left people naked and unarmed in the face of terrifying mysteries: pain, passion, death and the great perhaps of the hereafter. ~ Morris L. West

Somehow I feel that an ordinary person–the man in the street if you like–is a more challenging subject for exploration than people in the heroic mold. It is the half shades, the hardly audible notes that I want to capture and explore. […] My films are about human beings, human relationships, and social problems. I think it is possible for everyone to relate to these issues. On a certain level, foreign audiences can appreciate Indian works, but many details are missed. For example, when they see a woman with a red spot on her forehead, they don't know that this is a sign showing that she is married, or that a woman dressed in a white sari is a widow. Indian audiences understand this at once; it is self-evident for them. So, on certain level, the cultural gap is too wide. But on a psychological level, on the level of social relations, it is possible to relate. I think I have been able to cross the barrier between cultures. My films are made for an Indian audience, but I think they have bridged the gap. ~ Satyajit Ray

On the contrary, it's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics . It's the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance gold transfers we can't talk about, because those are understood so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about! ~ Richard P. Feynman

the single ruling party remains in control while a wide range of conversations about the country's problems nonetheless occurs on websites and social-networking services. The government follows this online chatter, and sometimes people are able to use the Internet to call attention to social problems or injustices and even manage to have an impact on government policies. As a result, the average person with Internet or mobile access has a much greater sense of freedom - and may feel that he has the ability to speak and be heard - in ways that were not possible under classic authoritarianism. ~ Larry Diamond

And against whom is this censorship directed? By way of answer, think back to the big subcultural debates of 2011 – debates about how gritty fantasy isn't really fantasy; how epic fantasy written from the female gaze isn't really fantasy; how women should stop complaining about sexism in comics because clearly, they just hate comics; how trying to incorporate non-Eurocentric settings into fantasy is just political correctness gone wrong and a betrayal of the genre's origins; how anyone who finds the portrayal of women and relationships in YA novels problematic really just wants to hate on the choices of female authors and readers; how aspiring authors and bloggers shouldn't post negative reviews online, because it could hurt their careers; how there's no homophobia in publishing houses, so the lack of gay YA protagonists can only be because the manuscripts that feature them are bad; how there's nothing problematic about lots of pretty dead girls on YA covers; how there's nothing wrong with SF getting called 'dystopia' when it's marketed to teenage girls, because girls don't read SF. Most these issues relate to fear of change in the genre, and to deeper social problems like sexism and racism; but they are also about criticism, and the freedom of readers, bloggers and authors alike to critique SFF and YA novels without a backlash that declares them heretical for doing so.


It's not enough any more to tiptoe around the issues that matter, refusing to name the wor ~ Foz Meadows

It pains me to say, that almost all of humanity has become obsessed with the pompous and fake glory of fame, that's why the dumbest words of the famous appear wise and the wisest words of the commoner seem dumb. Such is the society you live in - such is the society we all are proud to be a part of - shame on us! ~ Abhijit Naskar

For all the advances in technology, science and communications, there are signs that we are failing in areas where it matters most: our personal relationships and society in general. The atomisation of society evidenced by the startling increase in recent decades of single person households and the identification of loneliness and isolation as one of our most pressing new social problems, should give us cause for concern. ~ Cory Bernardi

I am not your dog that you whistle for; I'm not a stray animal you call over, and I am not, I never have been, nor will I ever be, your "baby"! ~ Joy Jennings

I say haven't we had enough of just tossing our children in jail? Make them do community service, I say! ~ Jacquel Chrissy May

In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it. ~ Cal Thomas

South Africans have no concept of time and this is also why we can't solve poverty and social problems ... It's now 10 years since the fall of the Apartheid government and we cannot blame Apartheid for being tardy. ~ Nelson Mandela

Turgenev saw human beings as individuals always endowed with consciousness, character, feelings, and moral strengths and weaknesses; Marx saw them always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because utterly conditioned by their circumstances. Where Turgenev saw men, Marx saw classes of men; where Turgenev saw people, Marx saw the People. These two ways of looking at the world persist into our own time and profoundly affect, for better or for worse, the solutions we propose to our social problems. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

We need scientists and mathematicians explaining why they are excited about their subjects but also why they are important for solving social problems, informing political debate and for the economy. ~ Marcus Du Sautoy

This is not a con game in the criminal sense, in which con artists deliberately dupe the suckers. Instead it's a form of good salesmanship, where the first principle is to sell yourself first. We sell ourselves on the value of education in solving social problems, and then we buy what we're selling. The whole thing rests on the uncertain foundation of our collective willingness to continue to believe the con. Whatever the problem, we continue to keep the faith in schools as the answer. ~ David Labaree

When we remove the snowdrift piled up over Chekhov in recent years, we uncover a man profoundly agitated by social problems; a writer whose social ideals are the same as those we live by; a philosophy of the divinity of man, of fervent faith in man - the faith that moves mountains. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Citizen activists look in the mirror, see what they're really good at and then apply their talents to solving social problems. It's skills-based volunteering. ~ Jonathan Tisch

The middle and working classes no longer think of the present society as structured around classes. Current opinion holds that the rich are deserving and the poor are not, while an incalculable number of people linger between the categories. A huge section of public opinion in the Western world tends to regard oppression and exploitation as residual abuses, not inherent features of a specific social order. The prevailing society is neither rationally analyzed nor forcefully challenged; it is prudently psychoanalyzed and politely coaxed, as though social problems emerge from erratic individual behavior. ~ Murray Bookchin

As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. ~ Maya Schenwar

Children are victims of a social problem that wounds the family. ~ Pope Francis

Drinking has become one of the most serious social problems. It is basically the result of an attempt to escape from the responsibilities and realities of life. ~ Billy Graham

Crucial to this is what conservatives see as the essence of America - the Ladder of Success myth. As long as free enterprise flourishes and anyone with enough self-discipline and imagination can become an entrepreneur, the Morality of Reward and Punishment will hold and all will be well. The logic of conservatism locates so-called "social" problems within people, not within society. For this reason, it would make no sense to conservatives to use class and social forces as forms of explanation and justification for social policy. Nature ~ George Lakoff

Most social problems could be helped or prevented if people had more money and practical advice. ~ Sue Townsend

There was a Princess Somebody of Denmark sitting at a table with a number of people around her, and I saw an empty chair at their table and sat down.
She turned to me and said, "Oh! You're one of the Nobel-Prize-winners. In what field did you do your work?"
"In physics," I said.
"Oh. Well, nobody knows anything about that, so I guess we can't talk about it."
"On the contrary," I answered. "It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance--gold transfers we can't talk about, because those are understood--so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!"
I don't know how they do it. There's a way of forming ice on the surface of the face, and she did it! ~ Richard Feynman

The problems of today's youth were no longer a Sunday supplement, or a news broadcast, or anything so remote and intangible. They were suddenly become a dirty, shivering boy, who told us that in this world we had built for him with our sweat and our blood, he was not only tired of living, but so unscared of dying that he did it daily, sometimes for recreation. ~ Spider Robinson

Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems. ~ Angela Davis

When there is no such thing as religious culture and moral education, serious social problems such as drug addiction and racism fill the gap. ~ Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth, and other social problems. ~ Kailash Satyarthi

If the only hammer you are given is the Internet, it's not surprising that every possible social and political problem is presented as an online nail. ~ Evgeny Morozov

I've always been progressive on social issues: pro-choice, pro-gun control, and pro-gay rights - even when I was a Republican. The big difference is that I once believed the private sector would address America's social problems. But then I saw firsthand that this wasn't going to happen. ~ Arianna Huffington

I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted and be willing to face the consequences whatever they are. And if he is filled with fear he cannot do it. My great prayer is always for God to save me from the paralysis of crippling fear, because I think when a person lives with the fears of the consequences for his personal life he can never do anything in terms of lifting the whole of humanity and solving many of the social problems which we confront in every age and every generation. In ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Men often have grievances against prominent and powerful persons. Historically, the grievances of the powerless against the powerful have furnished the steam for the engines of revolutions. My point is that in many of the famous medicolegal cases involving the issue of insanity, persons of relatively low social rank openly attacked their superiors. Perhaps their grievances were real and justified, and were vented on the contemporary social symbols of authority, the King and the Queen. Whether or not these grievances justified homicide is not our problem here. I merely wish to suggest that the issue of insanity may have been raised in these trials to obscure the social problems which the crimes intended to dramatize. ~ Thomas Szasz

As Mazzini said ... it is around the standard of duty rather than around the standard of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights of man. And herein may we see the deep philosophy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as themselves. In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to solve social problems and carry civilization onward. ~ Henry George

The best way for business to move out of the Hall of Shame is to demonstrate a commitment to social causes. This also makes business sense. A focus on solving social problems has motivational benefits in lean economic times. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

What worries me is the acceptance of the importance of feelings without any effort to understand their complex biological and sociocultural machinery. The best example of this attitude can be found in the attempt to explain bruised feelings or irrational behavior by appealing to surface social causes or the action of neurotransmitters, two explanations that pervade the social discourse as presented in the visual and printed media; and in the attempt to correct personal and social problems with medical and nonmedical drugs. It is precisely this lack of understanding of the nature of feelings and reason (one of the hallmarks of the "culture of complaint") that is cause for alarm. ~ Antonio R Damasio