Social Rules Quotes

The idea that gentleness isn't masculine or the dangerous idea that grown women shouldn't have body fat are sinful distortions of masculinity and femininity. These distorted ideas aren't what our good God intended for us when he gave us sexually differentiated bodies...It can also help us to recognize that growing in holiness as a son or daughter of God sometimes requires defying social rules about men not being gentle or women needing to eat so little that they cannot thrive. ~ Beth Felker Jones

Conformity is the biggest enemy of progress. Break those limiting social rules. ~ Debasish Mridha

Yet sacrifice of the self is everywhere viewed as the highest calling, and the more so for a woman, who must give every element of her life to others. Kindness is at all times counseled to women, who are called unnatural if not kind.

Yet how can a kindness that blights the life of even one--though it benefit others--be called good? Is it in face kindness to sever oneself from one's own desires? Mustn't the imperative to protect all life encompass--even for a woman--her own?

Then we must abandon our accustomed notion of a woman's kindness, and forge a new own. ~ Rachel Kadish

If your friend knows you at all, she is being rude by pressuring you to do something that is bad for you. Yes, bad for you. Engaging in a painful activity that leaves you feeling crummy about yourself is self-destructive. But your friend is probably not a jerk - you wouldn't have chosen her for a friend if she were. She's just following the social rules. And you may be following them too. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

Pray you never become Miss Grey with her £50,000 and love comes to you without social rules and people's need for approval. ~ Shannon L. Alder

All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy, avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth. ~ Karl Marx

We feel crowded by other people; we feel crowded by social rules; we feel crowded by ourselves, mainly. ~ Frederick Lenz

Fallen women are afforded a species of freedom.
Footnote: There is of course no such thing as a fallen woman, unless we are speaking of a woman who recently tripped on the stairs. One of the most difficult elements of this world is the way its social rules are simultaneously rigid and arbitrary. It is impermissible to engage in physical love before binding legal marriage, unless one is a young man of means. Men must be bold and assertive, but only if they are light-skinned. Any persons may fall in love regardless of station, but only if one is a woman and the other a man. I urge you not to navigate your own life by such faulty borders, my dear. There are, after all, other worlds. ~ Alix E. Harrow

Take the very word "etiquette." From the French for "little signs," it also connotes "social rules" both in French and in English. In fact, the two meanings share a history. King Louis XIV of France needed to give his nobles a bit of help behaving properly at his palace at Versailles, so little signs were posted telling them what was what - social dos and don'ts for dummies, so to speak. ~ Daniel Post Senning

Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to social rules, as anyone who has tried to teach simple house rules to a cat will agree. ~ Frans De Waal

All social groups groups make rules and attempt, at some times and under some circumstances, to enforce them. Social rules define situations and the kinds of behavior appropriate to them, specifying some actions as "right" and forbidding others as "wrong". ~ Howard S. Becker

I was not certain what social rules applied to the delayed discovery of one's wife's mummified body, ~ Elizabeth Peters

Gossip is perhaps the most familiar and elementary form of disguised popular aggression. Though its use is hardly confined to attacks by subordinates on their superiors, it represents a relatively safe social sanction. Gossip, almost by definition has no identifiable author, but scores of eager retailers who can claim they are just passing on the news. Should the gossip - and here I have in mind malicious gossip - be challenged, everyone can disavow responsibility for having originated it. The Malay term for gossip and rumor, khabar angin (news on the wind), captures the diffuse quality of responsibility that makes such aggression possible.
The character of gossip that distinguishes it from rumor is that gossip consists typically of stories that are designated to ruin the reputation of some identifiable person or persons. If the perpetrators remain anonymous, the victim is clearly specified. There is, arguably, something of a disguised democratic voice about gossip in the sense that it is propagated only to the extent that others find it in their interest to retell the story.13 If they don't, it disappears. Above all, most gossip is a discourse about social rules that have been violated. A person's reputation can be damaged by stories about his tightfistedness, his insulting words, his cheating, or his clothing only if the public among whom such tales circulate have shared standards of generosity, polite speech, honesty, and appropriate dress. Without an accepted normat ~ James C. Scott

Everybody is bound by some social rules. But I think that artists need some kind of freedom to explore their minds and that some of them tend to take that freedom to live a little more openly or a little more dangerously, sometimes a lot more self-destructively, than other people. ~ Anne Roiphe

Even though I was getting better education at home than any of the kids in Toyah, I'd need to go to finishing school when I was thirteen, both to acquire social graces and to earn a diploma. Because in this world, Dad said, it's not enough to have a fine education. You need a piece of paper to prove you go it. ~ Jeannette Walls

As pressure grows to ease the financial burden on social security, pressure will also grow to eliminate the elderly and infirm to 'free up' more money for the 'fit' and those who contribute more than they take from society. ~ Cal Thomas

In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be shocking becomes more important - and often more profitable - than to be civil or creative or truly original. ~ Al Gore

Psychotherapy is largely concerned with the debilitating or anti-social consequences of past punishments. ~ Aldous Huxley

Another bug hunt, boys. This one is a little different, as you know. Since they still hold prisoners of ours, we can't use a nova bomb on Klendathu --- so this time we go down, stand on it, hold it, take it away from them. The boat won't be down to retrieve us, instead it'll fetch more ammo and rations. If you're taken prisoner, keep your chin up and follow the rules --- because you've got the whole outfit behind you, you've got the whole Federation behind you; we'll come and get you. That's what the boys from the Swamp Fox and the Montgomery have been depending on. Those who are still alive are waiting, knowing that we will show up. And here we are. Now we go get 'em. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Since language represents the physical conditions that have been subjected to the maximum transformation in the interests of social life - physical things which have lost their original quality in becoming social tools - it is appropriate that language should play a large part compared with other appliances. ~ John Dewey

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

As a writer, it is my job to tell a story. I don't want to get involved in social commentary; I just want to show issues from a different point of view. I want to show issues from a perspective that may not be highlighted. ~ Nicola Monaghan

For me, and maybe for many religious kids of the '60s, the church lost relevance the more it became a surrogate in the movement for social and political change. ~ Mike McCurry

Anarchism as the name for an ideal total social form is a really complicated question. I have never found satisfying answers from anarchists about the definition of the state they are opposed to. Most are opposed to coercive forms of state power. Questions about large scale systems of organization and how they will be funded - those are questions it's hard to get anarchists to give good answers to. ~ Cynthia Kauffman

The social custom of calling on people when they are unwell has always mystified me. By definition, you're not feeling or looking your best. Why on earth do people assume you might want visitors? ~ Mary Louise Kelly

In the Christic tradition, this is the meaning of 'becoming as a little child.' Little children don't think they know what things mean, in fact, they know they don't know. They ask someone older and wiser to explain things to them. We're like children who don't know but think we do. We're meant to shine. Look at small children. They're all so unique before they start trying to be, because they demonstrate the power of genuine humility. This is also the explanation of 'beginner's luck.' When we go into a situation not knowing the rules, we don't pretend to know how to figure anything out, and we don't know yet what there is to be afraid of. This releases the mind to create from its own higher power. ~ Marianne Williamson

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in."
"We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it. ~ Saul D. Alinsky

Must we always comment on life? Can it not simply be lived in the reality of Christ's terms of contact with the Father, with joy and peace, fear and love full to the fingertips in their turn, without incessant drawing of lessons and making of rules? ~ Elisabeth Elliot

With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting. ~ Lauren Oliver

Since I am writing a book about depression, I am often asked in social situations to describe my own experiences, and I usually end by saying that I am on medication.
"Still?" people ask. "But you seem fine!" To which I invariably reply that I seem fine because I am fine, and that I am fine in part because of medication.
"So how long do you expect to go on taking this stuff?" people ask. When I say that I will be on medication indefinitely, people who have dealt calmly and sympathetically with the news of suicide attempts, catatonia, missed years of work, significant loss of body weight, and so on stare at me with alarm.
"But it's really bad to be on medicine that way," they say. "Surely now you are strong enough to be able to phase out some of these drugs!" If you say to them that this is like phasing the carburetor out of your car or the buttresses out of Notre Dame, they laugh.
"So maybe you'll stay on a really low maintenance dose?" They ask. You explain that the level of medication you take was chosen because it normalizes the systems that can go haywire, and that a low dose of medication would be like removing half of your carburetor. You add that you have experienced almost no side effects from the medication you are taking, and that there is no evidence of negative effects of long-term medication. You say that you really don't want to get sick again. But wellness is still, in this area, associated not with achieving control of your problem, but ~ Andrew Solomon

The variety of shape, pattern, and color found in the languages of the world is a testament to the wonder of nature, to the breathtaking array of possibilities that can emerge, tangled and wild, from the fertile human endowments of brain and larynx, intelligence and social skills. ~ Arika Okrent

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common. ~ Bill Bryson

What we need to do first is to find out how big the migration problem is and what the economic consequences of it are for the United States and Mexico. We hear a lot of extravagant numbers and claims made, but very few hard facts. We don't really know what, if any, burdens illegal migrants impose on the US economy or the social welfare apparatus, and those issues must be clarified. ~ Ernesto Zedillo

Many criminologists believe that the source of the state's pacifying effect isn't just its brute coercive power but the trust it commands among the populace. After all, no state can post an informant in every pub and farmhouse to monitor breaches of the law, and those that try are totalitarian dictatorships that rule by fear, not civilized societies where people coexist through self-control and empathy. A Leviathan can civilize a society only when the citizens feel that its laws, law enforcement, and other social arrangements are legitimate, so that they don't fall back on their worst impulses as soon as Leviathan's back is turned. ~ Steven Pinker

There is a great new work before us, which is to replace with true knowledge the ignorance that has destroyed human minds. We will construct unity in a world [which] has been brutally torn apart by false divisions of race, religion, gender, nationality, and age. We will heal with unconditional love those souls whose hearts have been disfigured by hatred and loneliness. ~ Aberjhani

the best predictor of whether we are happy or not is our social relationships. ~ Meik Wiking

I spent hours putting that cassette together. To me, making a tape is like writing a letter - there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one ... A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention, and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch ... oh, there are loads of rules. (pg. 88-9) ~ Nick Hornby

The keeping of an idle woman is a badge of superior social status. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society. ~ Charles Kuralt

What was the human animal in the midst of the siege? An herbivore that crawled on all fours, browsing on dirty grasses. A predator that hunted alone or in packs. A social animal that spoke of noble art and wound violin strings from the guts of dead sheep and pigs. A creature with canine teeth for tearing, but with a tongue for speaking. A mouth that could devour or sing. ~ M.T. Anderson

The more people come together, the more borders will be opened and people and opinions get together, the more unrenouncable tolerance will be a fundamental part of our social life. Without tolerance there is no religious liberty, no freedom of conscience and no freedom of thought. ~ Thomas Klestil

No, the religion of Jesus is a social religion. ~ George Whitefield

Folks hear stories like that, they just stop trying to talk to these young cats out here. We start generalizing about 'em just like the white folks do. We see 'em hanging out, we head the other way. After a while, even the good kid starts realizing ain't nobody out here gonna look out for him. So he figures he's gonna have to look after himself. Bottom line, you got twelve-year-olds making their own damn rules. Johnnie ~ Barack Obama

Government has ceased to mean upholding and reinforcing the traditional rights and morals of the governed; it now means compulsion in the service of social engineering. ~ Joseph Sobran

A social contract is the way out of this dilemma for corporations that want to lead in the 21st century by showing consumers how seriously they take customer loyalty and goodwill. ~ Simon Mainwaring

Mathematics is the science of skillful operations with concepts and rules invented just for this purpose. ~ Eugene Wigner

When I started running, the pain barrier was very familiar to me, and I had no problem pushing beyond the pain. When for your whole life, every single workout, you are programmed to push beyond belief, it's really hard to just turn that off and kind of just be a social competitor. ~ Summer Sanders

You have to admit, when people disappear, some rules go out the window. ~ Tim LaHaye

The key to losing weight and staying healthy is to experience more pleasure. So often we try diets with strict rules and limitations - that only make us feel bad. I say pursue quality and happiness. Make your favorite activities a part of your health routine instead of just limiting what you enjoy. Enjoying life and health is about abundance, not just limitation! I ~ Melissa Milne

Popular religion is a coping mechanism for the anxieties of a dysfunctional social and economic environment. ~ Gregory S. Paul

If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time. ~ Charles Fort