I dig old books. ™
Est. 1998
 | ||
Home About Contact Terms Privacy |
Quotations about Society
and Modern Living
Mad world! mad kings! mad composition! ~William Shakespeare
As I write, the world is in an ungentle mood. The result is the crisis psychology of our time, with its characteristic brink-of-war and brink-of-fascism mentality. Anything, we feel, may happen any day. Each day may spell the difference between the status quo and disaster. ~Max Lerner, "History if Written by the Survivors," It Is Later Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy, 1938–1943
There comes to every man a moment when he grows infinitely weary of the pompous confusion and cruel ignorance which is so elaborately organized to constitute human society — a moment when the heart is aware that the collective judgment of mankind is merely the brutal roaring of the loudest voices, and that this corrupt oracle can never by any chance be as wise as the whispers of the individual soul. ~Arthur Davison Ficke, "The Nature of Poetry," 1926
To be sure, Neighbour, the World is turned topsy-turvy! ~Charles Johnson, The Cobler of Preston, 1716
Human life is at sixes and sevens
Society is itself a kind of organism, an enormously powerful one, but unfortunately not a very wise one. ~Isaac Asimov, "Sociology," Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988
Men would not live long in society, were they not the mutual dupes of each other. ~François VI de la Rochefoucault (1613–1680)
...confess to a disgust of this new, artificial heartless life... ~Frederick William Robinson, Under the Spell, 1870
I wish I could go back to the old me. This modern world has torn me apart. ~Making History, "Body Trouble," 2017, written by Isaiah Lester [S1, E9, Sam Adams]
Men need not trouble to alter conditions; conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be beaten small enough to fit the hat. ~Gilbert K. Chesterton, "The New Hypocrite," What's Wrong with the World, 1910
It has been such a busy world... So many things have been torn up by the roots again that were settled... There were to be no more wars; democracy was democracy... ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife...
~Matthew Arnold, "The Scholar-Gipsy," 1853
Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it. Without first questioning the health of society, what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society? ~J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living:
You know your Neighbor's Wish beyond a doubt;
His Hedge, however low, means, "Please Keep Out!"
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Neighborliness," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty : what is the matter with the Rich is Uselessness. ~Bernard Shaw
Sick of life's warfare... ~Lizzie Marshall Berry (1847–1919), Heart Echoes: Original Miscellaneous and Devotional Poems, 1886
The wisdom of the world is sued for breach of promise. The lore of the ages is bankrupt. It cannot pay its debts. It is powerless to release a soul from pain, unable to mend a little broken heart, and even the hungry it cannot save from starvation. Strange situation, yet we explain it; we tell all who, like ourselves, are puzzled and perplexed, and content to remain so, that it is the problem of the ages. Are we not wise to use such words? We offer no solution, but give the problem a name.... why this abyss between the thought and the deed? Has not humanity been dreaming too much with its hands in its pockets? Has not the mind worked overtime and permitted the indolence of the body?... What is it we believe in? ~Bernard G. Richard, "Life and the Theories of Life," To‑Morrow, June 1905 [a little altered
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? ~Henry David Thoreau, 1860
When the stars gather in beauty, to-night,
Glorious, love-litten—a heaven in bloom—
Somewhere, astray, in a sorrowful plight,
Earth will be dreamingly toiling towards doom...
~Samuel Leonidas Simpson (1845–1899),
Is Error, though unwittingly supported by a host of good men, stronger than Truth? Are Right and Wrong convertible terms, dependent upon popular opinion? Oh no! ~William Lloyd Garrison
We must be willing, individually and as a Nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
When a man finds that photographers are willing to take his likeness for nothing — he has arrived. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor
Meanwhile, Aunt Cora observes that it’s getting harder and harder to worry needlessly. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
I see vulgarity is becoming more fashionable than ever. ~Charles Searle, Look Here!, 1885
It is a bad sign when men do not like to hear of warnings in a world of danger. ~Rev. William Borrows, M.A., Minister of St. Paul's Chapel, Clapham
You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. ~Octave Mirbeau, "The Mission," The Torture Garden, 1899, translated from the French by Alvah C. Bessie, 1931
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. ~Henry David Thoreau
Lucifer:
Here's a brave earth to sin and suffer on....
We'll sow it thick enough with graves as green
Or greener certes, than its knowledge-tree.
We'll have the cypress for the tree of life,
More eminent for shadow: for the rest,
We'll build it dark with towns and pyramids,
And temples, if it please you:—we'll have feasts
And funerals also, merrymakes and wars,
Till blood and wine shall mix and run along
Right o'er the edges...
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "A Drama of Exile"
Some days, we think that the world has gone completely mad. On other days, we are absolutely sure of it. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer, lumpenbangenpiano.com
The world was in torment. Hate and envy reigned supreme; and mistrust of man and indifference to God held universal sway...
Civilization had failed; failed because it was unnatural; failed because it was too material. The long years of scientific discovery had made mankind less dependent on himself; while the work he used to do gave way to an excess of pleasure for which he now had much time.
Religion had failed, for there was no unity; and a mass of wavering churchmen, in England, fought among themselves; swinging blindly from fantastic anarchy to superstitious tyranny, and back again.
There was a mass of sects, biting and slandering — sects who, intolerant of belief in the psychical world and doubtful of the accuracy of facts in modern history, had implicit faith in the reports of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four great journalists.
Politicians strove for power. Aristocratic Ministers... had lied too much and broken too many promises. Their words were as air... Plebeian Ministers wasted their breath and broke in
It was an odd world. It was dancing mad, pleasure mad, arguing mad. Nobody paid attention to any one else, and nobody cared whether they did or not. Civilization was having its last fling; drunk with a
...so far as I personally am concerned the public can go to the devil. It is the function of the public to prevent the artist's expression by hook or by crook.... we're in such a beautiful position to save the public's soul by punching its face that it seems a crime not to do so. ~Ezra Pound, letter to Harriet Monroe, December 1912
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;
Then let it come: I have no dread of what
Is called for by the instinct of mankind.
Nor think I that God's world would fall apart
Because we tear a parchment more or less.
Truth is eternal, but her effluence,
With endless change, is fitted to the hour;
Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect
The promise of the future, not the past.
I do not fear to follow out the truth...
~James Russell Lowell, "A Glance Behind the Curtain"
We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship. ~C.S. Lewis
We have an abundance of "statistics of crime," but no statistics of virtue. ~C. Nestell Bovee
How can I fix the world when the people in charge want it to stay broken? ~New Amsterdam, "Same As It Ever Was," 2021, written by Aaron Ginsburg, based on a book by Eric Manheimer [S4, E3, Imani Moore]
The choice so often these days is to believe something that seems insane or go insane. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~Isaac Asimov, "Science and Society," Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
~T. S. Eliot
"...Can't you sense what's going on around you? All the neurosis and the restrictive morality and the scatological repressions and the suppressed aggressiveness has finally gained the upper hand on humanity... Everyone feels like a Zombie, and somewhere at the ends of the night, the great magician, the great Dracula-figure of modern disintegration and madness, the wise genius behind it all, the Devil if you will, is running the whole thing with his string of oaths and his hexes."
"...Admit it at least... you feel guilty of something, you feel unclean, almost diseased, you have nightmares, you have occasional visions of horror, feelings of spiritual geekishness— Don't you see, everybody feels like that now."
...For a moment he was almost afraid that there was some truth in Levinsky's insane idea, certainly he had never felt so useless and foolish and sorrowful before in his life...
"It's the great molecular comedown... an atomic disease... death finally reclaiming life... the scurvy of the soul... it will ruin everything... Everybody is going to fall apart, disintegrate, all character-structures based on tradition and uprightness and so-called morality will slowly rot away, people will get the hives right on their hearts, great crabs will cling to their brains..."
"You know about molecules, they're made up according to a number of atoms arranged just so around a proton or something. Well, the
drivers of “progress”
steering us toward a cliff
at capital velocity
~Terri Guillemets, terriguillemets.com
Tolerance is like alcohol: in moderate amounts, it softens hard edges, and lubricates the machinery of social interaction; in excess, it leads to foolishness, incoherence, the annihilation of principle, and the destruction of the essential self. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer, lumpenbangenpiano.com
Privacy never goes out of style. ~Who's the Boss?, "It Happened One Summer:
The only safeguard of human dignity — the door and the doorlatch... And the windowshade. ~Jean Giraudoux, The Enchanted: A Comedy in Three Acts, 1933, adapted by Maurice Valency, English Acting Edition, 1950
This little ceremony... is designed to preserve to our posterity these monuments of human ingenuity — together with some other trifles, such as law and order and a living wage. ~Jean Giraudoux, The Enchanted: A Comedy in Three Acts, 1933, adapted by Maurice Valency, English Acting Edition, 1950
The more people who shrug their shoulders and say, "It is what it is," the more likely it is. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Is it my imagination, or does shipping and handling settle a box of crackers more than it used to? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Life has been reduced to getting food out of cans. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
Yet every year the girls are more beautiful, the athletes are better. So the dilemma remains. Is the curse on the world or on oneself? Does the world get better, no matter how, getting better and worse as part of the same process, or does the world get better in spite of the fact it is getting worse, and we are approaching the time when an apocalypse will pass through the night? ~Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians, 1966
A man, to be happy in this world, needs to have been born a fool. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
Appearances for them are absolute. So, like savages before their gods, they worship facts. And in return, the facts hit them like hailstones. Life is just one damned fact after another. They turn to collecting facts—laying them down—making "Outlines" of every real and fancied fact in the universe, until "truth" becomes an endless succession of stepping-stones that have a way of disappearing into a bog as soon as they are passed over, and the living and ever-present eternity is an abysmal void on the far horizon.
No doubt about it, we live in a fact-ridden world. Any man who has gathered a handful of facts now fancies himself a competent authority; and slinging facts at one another is the whole occupation of our second-rate scientists, politicians and economists, who trail behind them a vast horde of camp-followers trampling the living relationship of truth underfoot while they vociferate their "confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning." What wonder that human values are regarded as outworn?
~Max Plowman, "The Adelphi Forum: Keyserling's Challenge," December 1932
Commuter — one who spends his life
In riding to and from his wife;
A man who shaves and takes a train,
And then rides back to shave again.
~E. B. White, "The Commuter," 1925
There is no hope for the survival of humanity unless we realize the absurdity of man's false sense of sovereignty as well as the fallacy of absolute expediency. ~Abraham J. Heschel, "Children and Youth," 1960
When George Washington was President of the United States, the majority of the people in the country wanted him to go to war with France. They were excited and hysterical and when they were unable to stampede him into their way of thinking, or rather, of not thinking, they began to call him names. But after the country had "cooled off" a few months later, they saw that he had been right and they had been wrong. Washington came to a place of great leadership because he could keep his head level and cool.
Did you ever see a cattle stampede? It usually starts in some scare and frequently carries along hundreds of cattle to destruction. A "man stampede" is just as strange and unreasonable. Men are swept along by the force of others' unthinking action and immense harm is done. ~Halford E. Luccock, "The Biggest Word in the Dictionary," Five-Minute Shop-Talks, 1916 [a little altered
Nowadays you envy a manic-depressive. Half the time he's happy, the other half he's right. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
But nowadays the world moves quicker than in the long ago; old-fashioned methods make us snicker, they were so crude and slow. ~Walt Mason (1862–1939), "Knowledge by Mail," c.1910
The world maddens some, and brutifies others. ~J. De Finod
Is there any one, in our alternate moods of bafflement and exultation, who has not brooded on this queer divergence of Life and Happiness? Sometimes we feel that we have been trapped: that Life, which once opened a vista so broad and golden, has somehow jostled and hurried us into a corner, into a narrow treadmill of meaningless gestures that exhaust our spirit and mirth. In recent years all humanity has been herded in one vast cage of confusion and dread from which there seemed no egress. Now we are slowly, bitterly, perplexedly groping our way out of it. And perhaps in the difficult years of rebuilding each man will make some effort to architect his existence anew, creeping humbly and hopefully a little closer to the fountains of beauty and strength that lie all about us.
When did we learn to cut ourselves apart from earth's miracles of refreshment? To wall ourselves in from the sun's great laughter, to forget the flamboyant pageantry of the world? Earth has wisdom for all our follies, healing for all our wounds, dusk and music for all our peevishness. Who taught us that we could do without her? Can you hear the skylark through a telephone or catch that husky whisper of the pines in a dictograph? Can you keep your heart young in a row of pigeonholes? Will you forego the surf of ocean rollers to be serf to a rolltop desk?...
Here is this spinning ball for us to marvel at, turning in an ever-changing bath of color and shadow, blazed with sunshine, drenched with silver rain, leaning through green and orange veils of dusk, and we creep with blinkered eyes along narrow alleys of unseeing habit. What will it profit us to keep a balance at the bank if we can't keep a balance of youth and sanity in our souls? Of what avail to ship carloads of goods north, east, south, and west, if we cannot spare time to know our own dreams, to exchange our doubts and yearnings with our friends and neighbors?... It is like a man who should shoulder for a place at a quick lunch counter when a broad and leisurely banquet table was spread free just around the corner. ~Christopher Morley (1890–1957), "A Slice of Sunlight," Travels in Philadelphia, 1920
Anyone else tired of how media eats your brain? ~Daniel, @blindedpoet, tweet, 2011
What they sell to the masses are the chains you must break if you are ever to be in control of your life. ~Mike Dolan, @HawaiianLife, tweet, 2011
Meanwhile, Wall Street criminality is growing by leaps. There are no bounds. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Santayana, the philosopher, warns of a long winter
approaching—one of those seasons which periodically
overtake civilization. We might argue; nevertheless
bleak signs blow across the wind.
~Evan S. Connell, Jr., Points for a Compass Rose, 1973
Society never advances beyond a certain point. Look at us now... retrograding to the dull, stupid, old system in Europe, putting kings back on their thrones. We ran so far and then turned back. ~Byron, 2003, written by Nick Dear [Lord Byron: "But men never advance beyond a certain point; and here we are, retrograding, to the dull, stupid old system, — balance of Europe — poising straws upon kings' noses, instead of wringing them off!"
All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot expect any one but a scientist to be startled at the movement of a glacier. But if you distribute a few micrometric instruments upon that gloomy ice-field, the American civic consciousness, and if you take observations not oftener than once in three years, you will be startled. The direction of the general movement is absolutely right. But it all moves together. Special signs of progress imply general progress, and hence comes the extraordinary and scientific interest in the awakening of this community. It is like a man lapsed into the deepest coma who is beginning to stir. Watch him, take his pulse, surround him with every apparatus of experimental physiology, and you will find the laws of health, the norm of progress. ~John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation, 1900
Continuous progress is necessary in this age of strenuous effort, and the man who rests on his oars soon finds the tide sweeping him backward. Keep pushing ahead. ~Charles Austin Bates, "Practical Hints on Advertising," Brains for The Retailer and Advertiser, January 1905
The gods are satisfied when a man does his best, but the neighbors may still find fault with him. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor
The problem of our youth is not youth. The problem is the spirit of our age... What youth needs is a sense of significant being, a sense of reverence for the society to which we all belong...
We have denied our young people the knowledge of the dark side of life... They do not feel morally challenged, they do not feel called upon...
There are jobs, opportunities for success, comfort, security, but there is no exaltation, no sense for that which is worthy of sacrifice, no lasting insight, no experience of adoration, no relatedness to the ultimately precious.
Demands which were made of the individual in earlier periods are now considered oppressive. Self-discipline is obsolescent, self-denial unhygienic, metaphysical problems irrelevant. The terms of reference are emotional release and suppression, with little regard for remorse and responsibility...
Basic to man's existence is a sense of indebtedness... to society... to God. What is emerging in our age is a strange inversion. Modern man believes that the world is indebted to him... His standard and preoccupation: What will I get out of life? Suppressed is the question: What will life, what will society get out of me?...
The basic issue is how young people can be imbued with a proper sense of responsibility in an affluent society... There is no sense of responsibility without reverence for the sublime in human existence, without a sense of dignity... without an awareness of the transcendence of living. Self-respect is the fruit of discipline, the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself...
We prepare the pupil for employment, for holding a job. We do not teach him how to be a person... How to save the inner man from oblivion — this is the major challenge we face... We impart information; we must also foster a sense of appreciation. We teach skills, we must also stimulate insight. We are involved in numerous activities; we must not forget the meaning of stillness... Skills are vital, but so is self-restraint... ~Abraham J. Heschel, "Essay on Youth," 1960
So we go round the dreary circle. One reform is obtained, and a fresh failing springs up to take its place. One man cannot put himself against a system winked at by the whole country. It is a pity, but 'tis true, and pity 'tis 'tis true. ~Jerome K. Jerome, 1896
Though the street was tree-proof and bird-proof, clean, shiny and nice
Where civilization and sanitation had killed all but men and flies —
~Thomas McGrath, "The Seven Stations of Mrs. D," The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems, 1972
Fame consists in dying in action and getting your name misspelled on the casualty lists. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
Beautiful world! I see you. One day I shall comprehend you.
Wondrous life! We all allow it to become so marred.
How life would touch us with fond caress, and our cold hands but chill her.
We shout at her. Maybe if we would whisper she would hear. Her soul is not attuned to raucous sound.
~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: V," A Soul's Faring, 1921
When with a tired soul Thou stand'st apart
And life's most busy nothingness dost see,
When the hard question rises in thy heart
What all these contradictions here may be;
When thou dost see God's glorious world defaced,
As though the very sun should hide his light,
Ashamed at all the black lines man has traced
Upon the things that were so pure and bright;
When man's unkindness to his brother man,—
Not the great wars that shake a nation's weal,
But that indifference with which they fan
The flame of anguish which they do not feel;—
~Fanny Charlotte Wyndham Montgomery (1820–1893), "When with a tired soul," 1846
Our wisdom has only made the universe so big and strange that we cannot live in it. Three hundred millions of worlds! Think against that, will you? You might as well strike the Himalayas with your fist. And how like an east wind to famine is all our dreary theological lore! It simply adds cold to hunger. ~Rev. James Henry Ecob, D.D. (1844–1921), "The Gospel for the Twentieth Century," 1901
The wise man takes note of the spirit of the age, the politician panders to it, the statesman guides it. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor
I prefer Grimm's fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
~Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), "Possibilities," 1997, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak
When words stop meaning anything, when truth doesn't matter, when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can't work. ~Barack Obama, speech, 2018, as quoted by The Associated Press
Business having become the most important thing in life it is quite clear that it is destined to swallow up the feeble things that we used to call literature and art. They must accommodate themselves or die. ~Stephen Leacock, "Romances of Business," The Garden of Folly, 1924
Society hops this way and that, well-taught;
But while I watch, in cloudy state,
I feel as God would feel if he were brought
Frogs' legs on a plate.
~Emanuel Morgan (Witter Bynner), "Opus 9," Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, 1916 [farce
All a speed-reading course does for some people is enable them to become misinformed faster. ~Arnold H. Glasow (1905–1999)
Indeed you may gauge the degradation of an age by the multiplicity of its standards. ~John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation, 1900
Things happen too quickly, crisis follows crisis, the soil of our minds is perpetually disturbed. Each of us, to relieve his feelings, broadcasts his own running commentary on the preposterous and bewildering events of the hour: and this, nowadays, is what passes for conversation. ~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, 1940
I was talking to the devil the other day, and he told me that he seldom leads people astray anymore, finding it easier to just follow along in their footsteps. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us. Ideas of the Stone Age exist side by side with the latest scientific thought. Only a fraction of mankind has emerged from the Dark Ages, and in the most lucid brains, as Logan Pearsall Smith has said, we come upon "nests of woolly caterpillars." Seemingly sane men entrust their wealth to stargazers and their health to witch doctors. Giant planes throb through the stratosphere, but half their passengers are wearing magic amulets and are protected from harm by voodoo incantations. Hotels boast of express elevators and a telephone in every room, but omit thirteen from all floor and room numbers lest their guests be ill at ease. We function on a dozen different levels of intelligence. Earnest suburbanites in sack suits go in their automobiles to celebrate the ancient rites of Attis and Mithra, theophagous in grape juice. On the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox we dye eggs, according to immemorial custom, and seven days before the end of the year worship the pine tree, as did our neolithic forebears. Matter and impertinency are inextricably mixed. One of our greatest universities employs its vast endowment to furnish "scientific proof" of clairvoyance, while, at another, a Nobel prize winner in physics, finding Truth to be incomprehensible, decides that the incomprehensible must be true. The discoveries of the telescope, the spectroscope, and the interferometer are daily news, but the paper that carries them probably has an astrologer on its staff and would sooner omit the headlines than the horoscope. ~Bergen Evans, "Adam's Navel," The Natural History of Nonsense, 1946
[T]he army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me. ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958
It is the worst thing about any system which divides men, or allows them to be divided, into classes and castes, that it weakens the sense of a common humanity. Unequal distribution of wealth, and still more effectually, unequal opportunities of education and culture, divided society in your day into classes which, in many respects, regarded each other as distinct races. ~Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, 1888
Break the chains and the shackles that bind me
In the grip of civil strife...
~A. R. Pefley, "A Cit's Prayer," 1924
You wouldn't have me getting mixed up with the unwritten laws of the land, would you? ~Hughes Mearns, Richard Richard, 1916
Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for "Science." The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital importance — meaning, in effect, war and police espionage — the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least tolerated. The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. ~George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949
Society's sins are like new wine: they only require age to make them respectable. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882
The three horrors of modern life — talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963
Behold, the caverns of hell are opened now,
And flare in swirling smoke and clamor and lights
Up from the city's chasm-depth of streets.
With a thunder and roar, the fierce, the tortured sound
Bursts from its haunts, surges above the earth,
And rising tier by tier through the vast piles
That men have builded, shatters round about me
The stinging piteous anguish of its spray.
~Arthur Davison Ficke, The Breaking of Bonds: A Drama of the Social Unrest, 1910
I hate handing over money to people for doing for what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 1963
We speak of salaries and war instead of singing songs of life. ~Tom Brown, Jr.
What is new in our time is not senseless cruelty but a growing willingness to see sense in it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
You just can't escape it. This country is full of people who want to make their noise and, worse, make you listen. ~Terri Guillemets
From noise and nonsense on the bank of Thames,
Self-loving fops, and trifle-loving dames;
From bustling crowds, and what my hearing loaths,
The roar of coaches, and the belch of oaths;
From city cries squawl'd in a tongue unknown,
(Which shews our very mob to op'ra prone)
And all the busy nothings of the town...
~Anonymous, "D___ Hall," The London Magazine (Poetical Essays), June 1735
Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl's complexion. ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958
The world constantly sways me between poet and malcontent. ~Terri Guillemets
The public is hedged about by so many goddam bookkeepers that no time is left in which to produce. More time is spent in carrying out garbage than in carrying in food. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences...
~Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), "Nonreading," translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak
Every functioning society blends the elements of
...an eccentric culture has bred a hypersensitive ego. ~Mary Hunter Austin, Love and the Soul Maker, 1914
In the early stages of the war a man who had a fine record in the ranks but had been invalided out without any prospects said to me something which has since become a truism: — "I wish they would stop this 'hero' stunt about us. As far as I can see heroes need their victuals as much as anyone else." He was voicing a thought which has been growing stronger month by month of late. It is no good talking in terms of heroism when you have got to live by means of bread and butter. During the war it was dinned into our ears frequently and justly that we were striving for tremendous issues; that civilisation was at stake; that God Himself, as it were, hung in the balance. Since the war the same level of the tremendous has been insisted upon. There was to be a vast reconstruction of everything; a readjustment of all human relationships; a revaluation of all known values. In short, the new heaven was to be planted fairly and squarely in the soil of the old earth which had been ploughed up by the war.
But the sober fact is that you cannot go on living
A good many people would say that the task which lies before us at the moment might almost be expressed in these terms. For five years we ploughed the surface of the world by war. For nearly five years we have been loudly saying that we were engaged in planting orchids and other rare and wonderful flowers which were going to transform the face of the earth. Some of them, it is true, were only talked about and never planted; some were planted but wilted under the atmospheric conditions. And of those which have survived it is true to say that they were watered with tears and tonicked with blood and fanned with beautiful promises and they cost a fabulous sum. And the result has not been what was hoped. And
But this leads to a difficulty. We cannot go back to the previous normal. And if we could we must not dare to try to do so. There were social conditions that were rotten. Relations between human beings were too often inhuman. There were many things of which we said — and woe betide us if we ever stop from saying — "Never again." The task that lies before us is not to repeat
How would you set about this task? I am going to suggest one thing which is essential. There are certain factors which have not changed and with which we must reckon if we would build a new, normal life.
The first is human nature... There is the instinct of self-preservation which will lead a man to work for himself and for those dear to him and to do a hundred other different things which either make or upset a normal way of living. And that has not changed. There is competition, which some people curse, and which when cruel, as is often is, can be a curse indeed. But it is also one of the finest spurs of human activity. And that is still an instinct of our human nature at least. There is the tendency to kick over the traces. Whatever your social system may be you will find that that still exists. You may call it sin, or you may call it self-expression, but it is still there. And there is the ineradicable goodness in human nature. We know more about it than we did. The war showed us to what heights of splendid unselfishness men and women could rise. And the man who starts to build a normal life now, and forgets that fact, is a fool. Human nature then has not changed. But it is used as the great
Life has not changed. To be really happy, we need the fundamental things — work, love, ordeals, and God. The principles of human happiness remain the same; you may alter the clothing of those principles, but if you want to make men and women happy by giving them the best and fullest life, you must build your normal and commonplace upon these foundations which neither time nor conditions can alter. We have got to get to work on the job of planting our cabbages. ~The Dean of Manchester (The Very Rev. J. G. M'Cormick, D.D.), "Cabbage Planting," 1922
Complication has penetrated everywhere. Few people have an immediate insight into moral truth such as nature has revealed it. Almost all men, even the least cultivated, only see invisible things through phrases. Intuition is very rare, ready-made phrases are common and cheap. ~Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847), Philosophy. First Section: Pure Philosophy. Chapter II.—Metaphysics. II. Logic— 3. Problem of Cognition, Outlines of Philosophy and Literature, edited by Jean Frédéric Astié, 1865
Inequality in wages is "the root of all evil." Thus all labor should be paid alike. Poverty and crime must continue until this is accomplished. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
Junk mail, junk food, our society is full of junk living, period. ~Terri Guillemets
If you think that someone is out to steal everything you have, you're either paranoid or a member of the middle class. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
If philosophy gives us a diagram, the rest of life fills it up, and embellishes it with infinite illustration. The proofs multiply, and are hurled in upon us from all quarters of life and all provinces of endeavor. The anecdotes and fables of the world, its drama, its poetry and fiction, its religion and piety, its domestic teaching and its monuments support this instinct, and describe the same figure. Further still, there is not a man who does not reveal it in his soul's anatomy: so much so that upon every occasion except where his interests are touched, he is for virtue, and even where they are touched, it is only a question of a few degrees more heat to dissolve the habits and prejudices of a lifetime, and make him take off his coat and go into a war or a political campaign. ~John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation, 1900
There is a final stage in the relaxation of morals where everything is offensive, but it doesn't offend anybody. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
You can say a lot in a glance. A glance I have tried to perfect is one that says, "Try as you will, you can't offend me — but that doesn't mean you aren't offensive." ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The world is changing so fast I've got societal vertigo. ~Terri Guillemets, journal, 1991
The year is 2006. The world has changed in about 364 significant ways since you started reading this sentence. ~Terri Guillemets
What's going on...? Why does everything suck this hard?... how did we get here? ~South Park, "The Damned," 2016, written by Trey Parker [S20, E3, Randy]
You wonder sometimes how cruelty became so tolerable and the simple aspirations of the human soul so threatening. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Our system of training tends to smother man's sense of wonder and mystery, to stifle rather than to cultivate his sense of the unutterable... ~Abraham J. Heschel, "Essay on Youth," 1960
There will always be some to hate you, if you love yourself. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856
The lights of furnaces blind our eyes.
The voices of hammers fill our ears.
~Arthur Davison Ficke, The Breaking of Bonds: A Drama of the Social Unrest, 1910 [The Voices of the Men Who Labor
And after all... perhaps the greatest lesson which the lives of literary men teach us is told in a single word: Wait! — Every man must patiently bide his time. He must wait. More particularly in lands like my native land, where the pulse of life beats with such feverish and impatient throbs, is the lesson needful. Our national character wants the dignity of repose. We seem to live in the midst of a battle, — there is such a din, such a hurrying to and fro. In the streets of a crowded city it is difficult to walk slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd and rush with it onward. In the press of our life it is difficult to be calm. In this stress of wind and tide, all professions seem to drag their anchors, and are swept out into the main. The voices of the Present say, 'Come!' But the voices of the Past say, 'Wait!' With calm and solemn footsteps the rising tide bears against the rushing torrent up stream, and pushes back the hurrying waters. With no less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less certainty, does a great mind bear up against public opinion, and push back its hurrying stream. Therefore should every man wait, — should bide his time. Not in listless idleness, — not in useless pastime, — not in querulous dejection, — but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavors, always willing and fulfilling, and accomplishing his task, that, when the occasion comes, he may be equal to the occasion. And if it never comes, what matters it? What matters it to the world, whether I, or you, or another man did such a deed, or wrote such a book, so be it the deed and book were well done? It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome ambition to care too much about fame, — about what the world says of us; — to be always looking into the faces of others for approval; to be always anxious for the effect of what we do and say; to be always shouting to hear the echo of our own voices. If you look about you, you will see men who are wearing life away in feverish anxiety of fame, and the last we shall ever hear of them will be the funeral bel that tolls them to their early graves! Unhappy men, and unsuccessful! because their purpose is, not to accomplish well their task, but to clutch the 'trick and fantasy of fame'; and they go to their graves with purposes unaccomplished and wishes unfulfilled. Better for them, and for the world in their example, had they known how to wait! Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do, — without a thought of fame. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion: A Romance, 1839
Dear angry-distressed-hurtful World:
Call me when we return to spreading kindness.
~Dr. SunWolf, @WordWhispers, tweet, 2019, professorsunwolf.com
I have seen humanity hanging on a cross. Do none of you know what sighs the sun and stars look down on in this city, that you can think and talk of anything else? Do you not know that close to your doors a great multitude of men and women, flesh of your flesh, live lives that are one agony from birth to death? Listen! their dwellings are so near that if you hush your laughter you will hear their grievous voices, the piteous crying of the little ones that suckle poverty, the hoarse curses of men sodden in misery, turned half way back to brutes, the chaffering of an army of women selling themselves for bread. With what have you stopped your ears that you do not hear these doleful sounds? For me I can hear nothing else. ~Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, 1888
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. ~Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973
The scissors-grinder spoke to me...
"The moon is but an emery-wheel
To whet the sword of God,"
He said. "And here beside my fire
I stretch upon the sod
Each night, and dream, and watch the stars
And watch the ghost-clouds go.
And see that sword of God in Heaven
A-waving to and fro.
I see that sword each century, friend.
It means the world-war comes
With all its bloody, wicked chiefs
And hate-inflaming drums.
Men talk of peace, but I have seen
That emery-wheel turn round.
The voice of Abel cries again
To God from out the ground.
The ditches must flow red, the plague
Go stark and screaming by
Each time that sword of God takes edge
Within the midnight sky.
And those that scorned their brothers here
And sowed a wind of shame
Will reap the whirlwind as of old
And face relentless flame."
~Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, "The Moon is a Mirror: The Scissors-Grinder," 1913
Many of us have become as processed as our foods. ~Terri Guillemets, "Nutrimental," 2006
The Occidental snobbery which is invading us, the gunboats, rapid-fire guns, long-range rifles, explosives… what else? Everything which makes death collective, administrative and bureaucratic — all the filth of your progress, in fact — is destroying, little by little, our beautiful traditions of the past. ~Octave Mirbeau, "The Garden," The Torture Garden, 1899, translated from the French by Alvah C. Bessie, 1931
It has happened, that by the operation of commercial forces, the whole of America's seventy million people have been polarized into self-seekers... ~John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation, 1900
There are troubled times that call for cooler heads — and still more troubled times that call for warmer hearts. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Somehow among all our use of antibiotic medicine and antibacterial soap our souls are becoming sanitized as well — don't let it happen to you! ~Terri Guillemets, 2007
Alas, the gates of life never swing open except upon death, never open except upon the palaces and gardens of death. And the universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Blood everywhere and, where there is most life, horrible tormentors who dig your flesh, saw your bones, and retract your skin with sinister, joyful faces. ~Octave Mirbeau, "The Garden," The Torture Garden, 1899, translated from the French by Alvah C. Bessie, 1931
Ah, yes! the Torture Garden! Passions, appetites, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering. What I saw today, and what I heard, is no more than a symbol to me of the entire earth. I have vainly sought a respite in quietude and repose in death, and I can find them nowhere. ~Octave Mirbeau, "The Garden," The Torture Garden, 1899, translated from the French by Alvah C. Bessie, 1931
Blackbeard: His words, though, they sounded polite but they stung.
Stede Bonnet: Yah, that's called passive aggression. Pirates, they attack with force. The upper crust, they strike with cutting remarks disguised as politeness.
Blackbeard: That's fucking diabolical.
Bonnet: It is.
~Our Flag Means Death, "The Best Revenge Is Dressing Well," 2022, written by John Mahone
There is in me a constant simplex stand against the complex in society. ~Cave Outlaw (1900–1996)
I spit upon the laws that thieves have made
To give the crooked strength to rob the weak.
I spit upon a country full of wealth
Where millions live in squalor and in want.
I spit upon a flag that waves above
A nation made of masters and of slaves.
I spit upon religions that defend
A hell on earth, and preach a life to come.
I spit upon all morals that contend
That joy of life is not life's highest end.
I spit upon the education that
Makes pygmies out of what might have been men.
Upon this whole damned system do I spit,
And while I spit — I weep.
~Adolf Wolff (1883–1944), "Contempt," Songs, Sighs and Curses, 1913
It seems as if the larger part of the business in which men engage themselves nowadays, is to spoil the things God has made — the pure air, polluted; the pure food, polluted.
Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. ~Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless, 1992
Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. ~Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless, 1992
That ridiculous goose, the Public! Sometimes I wonder if the whole world
But what are we? You never heard of Man,
Or Earth; the Bedlam of the universe!
Where Reason, undiseas'd with you, runs mad,
And nurses Folly's children as her own...
~Edward Young, 1740s, see quoteinvestigator.com
I am afraid... that our little terraqueous globe here is the
Verily, when we think of such insane doings, it not unfrequently occurs to us that this world is in fact the lunatic asylum of the universe, and that we, and the other reasonable men who are with us, are merely here as the keepers thereof. ~The Scottish Temperance Review, 1848, see quoteinvestigator.com
The longer I live, the more I am inclined to the belief that this earth is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum. ~George Bernard Shaw, as quoted by Henry Neil, 1919, see quoteinvestigator.com
When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat? ~Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters, 1999
Home About Contact Terms Privacy | ||
|
www.quotegarden.com/society.html
Last saved 2025 Apr 01 Tue 11:52 CDT