Society Unwind Social Change Quotes

There isn't one single thing that will end unwinding. It will take a hodgepodge of random events that come together in just the right way and at just the right time to remind society it's got a conscience. -Sonia ~ Neal Shusterman

Not only do we naturalize history, but also consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible ~ Monique Wittig

I see the world as one big nation where everyone in it is a citizen. So it is our collective responsibility to make it better in every little way that we can. ~ Nurudeen Ushawu

Every person that steps up and commits to social change helps solidify the black movement cause. It is not easy for those who fill in the leader role. ~ Assata Shakur

When I was growing up it was still acceptable - not to me but in social terms - to say that one was not interested in science and did not see the point in bothering with it. This is no longer the case. Let me be clear. I am not promoting the idea that all young people should grow up to be scientists. I do not see that as an ideal situation, as the world needs people with a wide variety of skills. But I am advocating that all young people should be familiar with and confident around scientific subjects, whatever they choose to do. They need to be scientifically literate, and inspired to engage with developments in science and technology in order to learn more.
A world where only a tiny super-elite are capable of understanding advanced science and technology and its applications would be, to my
mind, a dangerous and limited one. I seriously doubt whether long-range beneficial projects such as cleaning up the oceans or curing diseases in the developing world would be given priority. Worse, we could find that
technology is used against us and that we might have no power to stop it.
I don't believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe. We stand at a threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on ~ Stephen Hawking

Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself. ~ Jane Addams

In the pursuit of breaking free from all the shackles of man-made bondages, science is the most effective tool we have till this date. ~ Abhijit Naskar

A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting to happen. The easiest way to get our minds around it is to stop thinking about revolution as a thing - "the" revolution, the great cataclysmic break - and instead ask "what is revolutionary action?" We could then
suggest: revolutionary action is any collective action which rejects, and therefore confronts, some form of power or domination and in doing so, reconstitutes social relations - even within the collectivity - in that light. Revolutionary action does not necessarily have to aim to topple governments. Attempts to create autonomous communities in the face of power (using Castoriadis' definition
here: ones that constitute themselves, collectively make their own rules or principles of operation, and continually reexamine them), would, for
instance, be almost by definition revolutionary acts. And history shows us that the continual accumulation
of such acts can change (almost) everything. ~ David Graeber

Our fears and taboos are largely social conditions imposed upon us by the ruling powers in order to keep us opressed. They manipulate us with our fears. Now let us be fearless. ~ Kathy Change

And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this
letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.
Books aren't just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable
but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change; in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy. ~ Octavio Paz

When a legislator succeeds, after persevering efforts, in exercising an indirect influence upon the destiny of nations, his genius is lauded by mankind, whilst, in point of fact, the geographical position of the country which he is unable to change, a social condition which arose without his co-operation, manners and opinions which he cannot trace to their source, and an origin with which he is unacquainted, exercise so irresistible an influence over the courses of society that he is himself borne away by the current, after an ineffectual resistance. Like the navigator, he may direct the vessel which bears him along, but he can neither change its structure, nor raise the winds, nor lull the waters which swell beneath him. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

what is a psychopath? The short version." "A person who is superficially charming and well-spoken; demonstrates inflated self-esteem, arrogance, and a sense of superiority; is consistently deceitful and prone to pathological lying; is cunning and manipulative, maneuvering others for his or her own personal gain; has no remorse and feels no guilt; is callous, inconsiderate, and unconcerned by the pain and suffering of others; shows shallow affect, demonstrating a limited range and depth of emotional responses and feelings; exhibits minimal fear responses and a disinclination to change behavior in response to pain or negative social stimuli; and gets bored easily, needing constant stimulation. ~ Paul Draker

Change is freedom, change is life.
It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed.
There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I entered medicine to use it as a vehicle for social change. ~ Patch Adams

Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration. ~ Neil Postman

What good is science if not expand one's soul so that she behaves like an ocean that holds the trash. What good is intelligence if not enlarge one's personality so that he was increasingly able to understand other people? ~ Emha Ainun Nadjib

I'm an Yoruba man born and raised in Ghana. Practically I'm a Ghanaian. But first and for most I'm a human being. And I have no prejudice about myself, I have no prejudice about people either. I'm free from all prejudices. I hate no one, I treat people equally. That being said, indeed, I know I can stand all people, and I can fit in any society. ~ Nurudeen Ushawu

here is one other element of the apocalyptic tradition to be considered, namely transition. I said a minute ago that one of the assumptions prevalent in sophisticated apocalyptism was what Yeats called 'antithetical multiform influx'--the forms assumed by the inrushing gyre as the old one reaches its term. The dialectic of Yeats's gyres is simple enough in essence; they are a figure for the co-existence of the past and future at the time of transition. The old narrows to its apex, the new broadens towards its base, and the old and new interpenetrate. Where apex and base come together you have an age of very rapid transition. Actually, on Yeats's view of the historical cycle, there were transient moments of perfection, or what he called Unity of Being; but there was no way of making these permanent, and his philosophy of history is throughout transitional. In this he is not, of course, original; but his emphasis on the traditional character of our own pre-apocalyptic moment, in contrast with those exquisite points of time when life was like the water brimming beautifully but unstably over the rim of a fountain, seems, for all the privacy of the expression, characteristically modern.

It is commonplace that our times do in fact suffer a more rapid rate of change technologically, and consequently in the increase of social mobility, than any before us. There is nothing fictive about that, and its implications are clear in our own day-to-day lives. What is interesting, t ~ Frank Kermode

Th direct elimination of elimination of poverty should be the objective of all development aid. Development should be viewed as a human rights issue, not as a question of simply increasing the gross national product (GNP). ~ Muhammad Yunus

Most of the social and political ills from which you suffer are under your control, given only the will and courage to change them. You can live in another and a wiser fashion if you choose to think it out and work it out. You are not awake to your own power. ~ H.G.Wells

If we define society as a human community, then the transformation of individual attitudes and values represents meaningful social change. ~ Leslie Weisman

The Western States nervous under the beginning change.
Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land.
Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants
the land. The land company--that's the bank when it has land
--wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is
the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor
were ours it would be good--not mine, but ours. If our tractor
turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good.
Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as
we have loved this land when it was ours. But the tractor
does two things--it turns the land and turns us off the land.
There is little difference between this tractor and a tank.
The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think
about this.

One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car
creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a
single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered.
And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another
family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat
on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the
node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these
two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each
other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the
zygote ~ John Steinbeck

Speak truth and you will be attacked by the untruthful. Speak about absolutely nothing, and nothing will speak back, but then nothing will ever change. ~ Suzy Kassem

Steven Tepper's Not Here, Not Now, Not That! offers invaluable insights into how social change and uncertainty drive protests over art. With fresh data and perspectives, Tepper makes a compelling case that cultural conflicts are largely homegrown, tied to each community's shifting demographics and values. It's an eye-opening work. ~ Ken Paulson

Only the lonely, who can teach us, to not ambiguous. ~ Emha Ainun Nadjib

Leaders who formulate positive ideas and implement effective change in their community can help others overcome difficult economic and social hardships. ~ Saaif Alam

Survival and persistence, sung defiantly in the high notes of the diva, are no small feats in a world that wishes fervently for one's nonexistence and/or silent complicity in one's own exploitation. The narcissistic self-regard implied in the negative definition of the diva is a radical insistence on self-love when no one else loves you, when you are not, according to social norms, worthy of being loved at all, but only of being desired in a way that uses you up or consumes you. To say that diva citizenship cannot change the world is to accept a meaning of "the world" that aligns it only with the privileged. An investigation of the real function of diva citizenship has to start by asking who these acts are for, and whether the very fact of having something for herself can change a person, who might then go on to change the world just by surviving in it for one more day. ~ Amy Gentry

It's important to remember that we all change each other's minds all the time. Any good story is a mind-altering substance. ~ Hank Green

I've always been interested in the social conflict of my age, my own time, as well as the result of positive and negative of social change, and the ongoing quest we all have, from the cradle to the grave, for identity. ~ Stephanie Rothman

In order to bring about a convulsive political change, it was essential to intensify the existing social tensions to the point where all would be driven to choose sides in what would thus be established as a simplistic equation of class conflict. Marxists and their ideological inheritors described this as sharpening the contradictions of society. ~ Richard K. Morgan

It can literally change someone's life; it's very positive for young teenagers to get into cosplay if they do it with their friends or with supervision from their parents - it can really foster their social skills. ~ Yaya Han

Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility. ~ Rebecca West

The suffering of either sex - of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult - this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change. ~ Margaret Mead

I am writing to make sure that kids don't lose very important traits like curiosity that can drive social change because oftentimes I think parents emphasise more on doing well in school, which is important, but perhaps that sometimes comes at the cost of a child's natural curiosity. ~ Adora Svitak

It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order. ~ Cesar Chavez

Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world. Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind. ~ Paul Kriwaczek

Silence is the enemy of social change. ~ Marc Bekoff

We cannot afford to be discouraged from challenging the corporate control of our food system, our genetic commons, our shared resources, or our democracy. The history of social change in our nation shows that the political system can be reformed, even if the road is long and zigzag. ~ Wenonah Hauter

It occurred to him that he'd made a habit of pissing on the shoes of very powerful beings, but he'd never been a study in social graces. Why change now? ~ Kevin Lucia

The preoccupations of young women-their looks, their clothes, their social life-don't seem to change much from generation to generation. But in every generation there are a few that make others choices. ~ Elisabeth Elliot