Societal Degredation Quotes

In the 1950s kids lost their innocence.
They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars, and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term ---the generation gap.

In the 1960s, kids lost their authority.
It was a decade of protest---church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting. Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it.

In the 1970s, kids lost their love. It was the decade of me-ism dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self.
Self-image, Self-esteem, Self-assertion....It made for a lonely world. Kids learned everything there was to know about sex and forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference.

In the 1980s, kids lost their hope.
Stripped of innocence, authority and love and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future.

In the 1990s kids lost their power to reason. Less and less were they taught the very basics of language, truth, and logic and they grew up with the irrationality of a postmodern world.

In the new millennium, kids woke up and found out that somewhere in the midst of all this change, they had lost their imagination. Violence and perversion entertained them till none could talk of killing innocents since none was innocent anymore. ~ Ravi Zacharias

A disposable society is only fit for disposable people. ~ Bryant McGill

Cripples are not the stuff of romance. Only Lord Byron, dragging his club foot, springs to mind as an exception to the rule, but such a failing in a man is regarded as interesting, even provocative, rather than disfiguring. Women must submit to a more exacting measure. ~ Mordecai Richler

The U.S. uses most of its oil for transportation. We can limit U.S. demand for oil by requiring automakers to use the technology that already exists to improve fuel economy - technology that the automakers refuse to bring into the market despite societal demand. ~ Sherwood Boehlert

Education, the free flow of information, is key for our personal and societal growth. It all comes back to education. ~ Jayni Chase

There should not be opinion regarding anything. Opinion means you are supporting it. 'Know' the wrong as wrong, 'Know' right as right. There should not be any attachment (raag) towards the right, and abhorrence (dwesh) towards the wrong. There is no such thing as right or wrong. Right and wrong is a duality, it is illusionary vision, it is a societal belief. God does not see it that way. In God's view, having a dinner on the table or going to toilet, they are both the same. ~ Dada Bhagwan

The thing is, one in three women in the Western world will end up having an abortion, but they never talk about it. When you keep silent about that stuff, it is because you are embarrassed by the societal distaste of the topic. ~ Caitlin Moran

By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence. ~ Caitlin Doughty

We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore, there's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman is created. ~ David Fincher

In 2011, actor Johnny Depp told the November issue of Vanity Fair that he felt participating in a photoshoot was akin to rape.

"Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow. Raped . . . It feels like a kind of weird - just weird, man. But whenever you have a photo shoot or something like that, it's like - you just feel dumb. It's just so stupid," he said.

Likening instances of being flustered or uneasy to the often life-shattering experience of rape has become a far too common comparison in modern lexicon.

The phrase "Facebook rape" is perhaps the most widely used, which implies one person has posted on another person's Facebook account - usually something intended to embarrass the person.

But the casual, flippant use of the term "rape" in instances that do not involve sexual violence is highly problematic in that it trivialises one of the most despicable invasions of a human being.

Desensitising the masses to the term "rape" is just another way the conversation surrounding sexual assault is derailed or diluted in society.

Rape is, and should be considered universally, as a serious societal sickness that occurs within the "toxic silence" that surrounds sexual assault as Tara Moss put so elegantly in her recent Q&A appearance.

Further to that, the use of the term can be a trigger for rape survivors in that it may jolt terrifying memories of their own experience.

According to the ~ Emma Elsworth

Women retain their dependence needs long past the developmental point at which those needs are normal and healthy. Unbeknownst to others - and worse, unbeknownst to ourselves - we carry dependency within us like some autoimmune disease. We carry it with us from kindergarten through college and graduate school, into our careers, and into the convenient "arrangement" of our marriages. (...) Much of the time - for many of us, all of the time - our unwillingness to stand on our own two feet goes unnoticed because it's expected. Women are relational creatures. They nurture and need. This, we have been told for many, many years, is nature.
And although it cripples us, we have to let it go unquestioned. ~ Colette Dowling

Within our core self is an indelible blueprint of unrivaled individuality - the singular being that each of us exists to express. In this three-dimensional movie called "Life" there are no stand-ins, body doubles, or understudies - no one can fill in for us by proxy! Realization of this truth alone eliminates the need to imitate, conform, limit, or betray our loyalty to the originality of Self. Imagine the relief of removing your carefully crafted masks fashioned by societal forms of conditioning and instead responding to what comes into your experience directly from your Authentic Self. One of the first principles to honor in your relationship with yourself is to respect and trust your own inner voice. This form of trust is the way of the heart, the epitome of well-being. ~ Michael Bernard Beckwith

Justice is the alignment of societal laws with natural Law, and the righting of wrongs. Justice creates liberty. Justice maintains the character of love and can be said to be a product of right actions by a society. Things that are right promote the well-being of individual selves and societies. What is right can be said to always be just. If a society commits to justice by aligning societal laws with natural Law and respecting the rights of natural Law, then it will promote love through liberty. ~ C W Newman

All of us, whether vivisector or vegan, have been subject to mechanisms undercutting sympathy for animals. How long and to what extent we submit to these mechanisms is not a matter of rationality: to cut off our feelings and support animal exploitation is rational, given societal expectations and sanctions; but to assert our feelings and oppose animal exploitation is also rational, given the pain involved in losing our natural bonds with animals. So our task is not to pass judgment on others' rationality, but to speak honestly of the loneliness and isolation of anthropocentric society, and of the damage done to every person expected to hurt animals. ~ Brian Luke

Stories are there to entertain, preserve history, or serve a societal purpose of some kind. ~ Sylvain Neuvel

What this means is that most non-vegans can only imagine what it would be like for them to be vegan, whereas the vegan can actually remember what it was like for her to be non-vegan. And yet, against all societal odds, he lives, thrives, and continues to enjoy food. ~ Sherry F. Colb

A slut is someone, usually a woman, who's stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We're messy. We don't behave. In fact, the original definition of "slut" meant "untidy woman." But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line. ~ Jaclyn Friedman

I just am a clean air freak. I grew up in the woods. I worked in China for a bit and was exposed to all the resources being used and the pollution and felt strongly that for our generation, the biggest economic and societal problem is energy. ~ Lynn Jurich

The early and relatively sophisticated Egyptians understood that their civilization would be threatened if they bred with the Negroes to their south, so pharaohs went so far as "to prevent the mongrelization of the Egyptian race" by making it a death penalty-eligible offense to bring blacks into Egypt. The ancient Egyptians even constructed a fort on the Nile in central Egypt to prevent blacks from immigrating to their lands. In spite of the efforts by the Egyptian government to defend their civilization, blacks still came to Egypt as soldiers, slaves, and captives from other nations. By 1,500 B.C., half of the population of southern Egypt was of mixed blood, and by 688 B.C., societal progress had ended in Egypt when Taharka became the first mulatto pharaoh. By 332 B.C., Egypt had fallen when Alexander the Great conquered the region. ~ Kyle Bristow

One strong idea being put forth these days (...) is that women should above all be given choice. (...) But this "right to choose" whether or not we provide for ourselves has contributed mightily to the female achievement gap. Because they have the social option to stay home, women can - and often do - back off from assuming responsibility for themselves. (...) There is something wrong with this. (...) We want so desperately to believe that we do not have to be responsible for our own welfare. ~ Colette Dowling

It seems to me that if you were to take almost any half-century in history, you'd find a grand societal tug-of-war between the community and the individual. ~ Lauren Groff

Your false self is the accumulation of all the voice you have internalized from other people-parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values that can easily seduce you. It also includes the voice of your own ego, which constantly tries to protect you from from unflattering truths. ~ Robert Greene

There are cultural and societal prejudices that make it hard for us to write. It has been my experience that for some men, the struggle to write involves the prejudice that it is not "manly" to reveal the inner life, the secrets of the heart and of the imagination. For many women, the struggle to write is at base a struggle against the idea that women's lives are not of interest as literature. I have a friend whose husband once said after her first book had been published, "You sit there writing as if your life had some significance. ~ Pat Schneider

An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home. ~ Francois Hollande

a town with more drinking joints than reading joints has a problem reading can solve ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The girl with a moustache" they called me every now and then
"It's about time you wax your arms" those who "cared" said
I faced the fears of the dreaded thread on my face
To succumb every other week to the world's ways ~ Sanhita Baruah

Gertrude Stein maintained that one wrote for oneself and for strangers, a superb recognition that I would extend into a parallel apothegm: one reads for oneself and for strangers. The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called "aesthetic dignity." One of the ineluctable stigmata of the canonical is aesthetic dignity, which is not to be hired. ~ Harold Bloom

There's something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics tell you a truth you can only see from the underside of the psyche. At its best, comedy is prophesy and societal dream interpretation. At its worst it's just dick jokes. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

. . . why not ask your congressman or woman to support universal background checks? Ask him or her to renew the ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Offer a pink slip to any legislator who refuses to explain his or her lack of support for these common-sense measures. With rights come responsibilities. While we enjoy a right to bear arms, we have a societal obligation to do so responsibly and safely. We are, after all, responsible for each other. Our governing is done by the people and for the people. It is in the best interest of the people, all the people, to apply common sense to the gun issue . . . ~ Mark M. Bello

While we avoid taking credit for success, women leap at the opportunity to take responsibility for failure. Men tend to externalize the reasons for their failure, putting it off on something or someone else. Not so women, who absorb blame as if they were born to be societys doormats. (Some women like to speak of their willingness to take blame as if it were a form of altruism. It isn't. Women take the blame because they find it scary to confront those who are actually culpable of wrongdoing.) ~ Colette Dowling

White supremacy is the societal excrement that fertilizes racial disparities in America. It distorts the reality of historical and present day factors that create the staggering racial inequality that exists today. ~ James A. Barlow

We can't just rail against crime. We must speak of the root problems - devastating family breakup, an insidious culture of violence that cheapens human life, skyrocketing prisoner recidivism rates that rob our communities of husbands and fathers - and recognize that there is a societal role in rehabilitation and restoration. ~ Frank Wolf

Jiu Jitsu removes the societal walls that we have been forced to unknowingly hold up with our adopted beliefs. It removes the limits of common thought, and allows for expression of our highest ideals. ~ Chris Matakas

If women have an income, they will invest a higher proportion of that income in their children than men do. So you do get those societal returns very quickly. ~ Ann Cotton