66 Quotes About Social Commentary

Remember it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you. Unknown

What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? Unknown

If they do these things when the tree is green, what will they do when it is dry? Unknown

If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers and has been presented to her Sovereign at Court. From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue. William Makepeace Thackeray

It’s not the word that’s important, it’s the right to say any word you want to and to form any sentence you want to, that’s the point and once they start to legally restrict what we can say and what we can’t say then we are on a slippery slope to authoritarianism.” “We’re talking about racists, ” said Karen. “No one should be allowed to be racist, ” said Mark. “But that’s not down to the Government or the courts, ” said Rob desperately, “that should be down to us, we should make it difficult for people to be racist, we should frown upon such language and activity, it should be by peer pressure that we stop people from being abusive and unpleasant, not down to the Government.” “Why not?” demanded Karen, “they make the laws so it’s down to them to make the punishments.” “It’s not about punishment, ” pressed Rob, “it’s about morality and social conscience, it’s about standing up for what’s right versus moral laziness, it’s about courage versus cowardice. Arun D. Ellis

Tyrena did not laugh again but her smile slashed upward in a twist of green lips. “Martin, Martin, Martin, ” she said, “the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg’s day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments. . Dan Simmons

Human history is full of depressing things like colonization, disease, racism, sexism...inventions of things which they had no idea how to handle (the atomic bomb, the Internet, the semicolon).... And through it all there has always been some truly awful food. Matt Haig

Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of live. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus . Emma Cline

To me, the best zombie movies aren’t the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics. Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society… and our society’s station in the world. They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too… but there’s always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness. Robert Kirkman

There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. William Gibson

There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. Edith Wharton

One problem with the division of labor in our complex economy is how it obscures the lines of connection, and therefore of responsibility, between our everyday acts and their real-world consequences. Specialization makes it easy to forget about the filth of the coal-fired power plant that is lighting this pristine computer screen, or the back-breaking labor it took to pick the strawberries for my cereal, or the misery of the hog that lived and died so I could enjoy my bacon. Specialization neatly hides our implication in all that is done on our behalf by unknown other specialists half a world away. Michael Pollan

Since men are equal and thus have the same wish for happiness, and since there is not enough wealth to satisfy them all to the same extent, they necessarily fight against each other and want power to secure the future enjoyment of what they have at present. Erich Fromm

People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be - flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design… there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own. E.m. Forster

...because the great beauty of embryo development, the bit that human beings find so hard to grasp, is that it is a totally decentralised process...no cell need wait for instructions from authority; every cell can act on its own information and the signals it receives from its neighbours. We do not organise societies that way... Perhaps we should try. Matt Ridley

When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men. Tiffany Madison

Half of life is lost in charming others. The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others. Leave this play. You have played enough. Rumi

Points of views that are expressed on Twitter don’t intend to offend, but rather defend and open the conversation up to everyone so that no one has to pretend. Germany Kent

He was no stranger to compassion: his heart was open to many good impulses, though his rank often prevented their manifestation. Nikolai Gogol

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?… There is nobody–here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone. Virginia Woolf

It was the age of confidence. Arrogance was epidemic. David Laskin

The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. Larry Niven

..the happy hum of humanity. Arthur C. Clarke

Considering our backgrounds, I found it a strange irony that Ian and I should meet in central Borneo. Both of us were set in motion by the war in Southeast Asia. Ian enlisted. I left the country several weeks before an FBI agent arrived at my parents' front door. Eric Hansen

I wrote Unwind for lots of reasons, and it poses questions about alot of subjects. To state it briefly, I wanted to point out how when peopletake intractable positions on an issue, and stick to extreme sides, sometimes the result is a compromise that is worse than either extreme. Imeant it as a wake up call to society -- and to point out that sometimes theproblem IS that we take sides on an issue, when a different sort of approachis needed. It's also to pose questions about what it means to be alive. Where does life begin, where does it end -- and point out that there is nosingle answer to these questions. The problem is people who think there aresimple answers. People who see things as simple black-and-whiteright-and-wrong are the type of people who will end up with a world like theworld in Unwind. . Neal Shusterman

Did you notice there aren’t any average kids anymore–only Gifted and Disposable? Heather Choate Davis

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived..." (Bk2:3) JeanJacques Rousseau

I know the police cause you trouble They cause trouble everywhere But when you die and go to heaven You find no policeman there Woody Guthrie

I know positively - yes Rieux I can say I know the world inside out as no one on earth is free from it. And I know too that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest- health integrity purity if you like - is a product of the human will of vigilance that must never falter. The good man the man who infects hardly anyone is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power a never ending tension of the mind to avoid such lapses. Yes Rieux it's a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it's still more wearying to refuse to be it. That's why everybody in the world today looks so tired everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us who want to get the plague out of their systems feel such desperate weariness a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death. . Albert Camus

It was mid- November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget. Walter Mosley

Last summer, in London at least, the hoodie was transformed from a benign piece of leisurewear into a uniform for the disaffected, the angry, the malevolent. So much so that ‘hoodie’ was no longer a piece of clothing. It was a whole person. A hoodie was somebody likely to steal, plunder and do you unimaginable harm. People were crossing the street when a hoodie crossed their path - even if it was a 70-year-old gentleman walking his dog. That’s how quickly the fear had permeated the collective consciousness. And lifting the hood was tantamount to cocking a gun. . Mark Capell

Before civilization, artists painted for the living. Today, most paint for a living. Mokokoma Mokhonoana

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs. Elbert Hubbard

...all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust Nathanael West

You see man we are just fucking extras! ! Extras in a capitalist blockbuster! ~page 75 Winshluss

What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power… I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it. Irvine Welsh

Immature citizens in several sizes were massed before a large factorylike structure where advanced techniques transformed them into true-thinking right-acting members of the three social classes, lower, middle, and upper middle. Donald Barthelme

I think it is just a matter of getting into the mind of the writer, ” Vetinari went on, looking at a letter covered with grubby fingerprints and what looked like the remains of someone’s breakfast. He added: “In some cases, I imagine, there is a lot of room. Terry Pratchett

Oh, those hateful sods will never make it to Heaven. They’re all on an express elevator to the gay spit-roast dungeon in Hell. Within five minutes of kicking the bucket, they’ll have demon balls swollen with fiery spunk slapping off their shapeless chins. Unknown

So you've been gone a couple days, ' Alison said. 'Hmm, what'd you miss... A celebrity did drugs. Politicians disagreed. A different celebrity wore a bikini that revealed a bodily imperfection. A team won a sporting event, but another team lost.' I smiled. 'You can't go disappearing on everybody like this, Hazel. You miss too much. John Green

It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun. . Trevanian

Riding in a carriage without an escort is modern. But traveling out and about unescorted is unheard of. Jordan Stratford

Being in prison for seven years was like being in an army that never drilled, never deployed, and only fought itself. Raegan Butcher

When we forget our essential similarities, we forget how to get along, and that cannot but lead to prejudice, discrimination, and eventually, conflict. G. Norman Lippert

I love social media. I love the connectivity it provides, the creativity it allows, and the breathtaking wealth of information we all have at our fingertips because of it. Galit Breen

Jazz is democracy in music. Wynton Marsalis

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure. H.l. Mencken

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities, ' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die! John Cage

Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death. Neil Postman

It's basically the same in all periods of societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.'' And those troubling things are all you /can/ think about when you're one of the few.'' That's about the size of it, ' she said mournfully. 'But maybe, if you're in a situation like that, you learn to think for yourself.'' Yes, but maybe what you end up thinking for yourself /about/ is all those troubling things. Haruki Murakami