Someone … tell us what’s important, because we no longer know.

The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this because I’m a...

If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the k nowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it,...

It’s significantly more satisfying to kick a wall than it is to kick thin air. For the rebellious teen- or the teen who wants to feel like a rebel- a clearly defined law gives you...

…the social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a...

Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of “inspiration.” It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge — that is to say,...

And somewhereout there,in the river ofaddicts, alcoholics,wife beaters,doormats,overeducated legalized thieves,fascist police,and bitter rivalries—someone told meit’s a good city,and I don’t knowwhat’s more frightening

You exalt me Bati,This is the message to the society,Brightest day demands struggling, suffering and sacrifice,heroic labor would suffice.

My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or...

Artists don’t create society, they reflect it

A disposable society is only fit for disposable people.

A bitter thing cannot be made sweet. The taste of anything can be changed. But poison cannot be changed into nectar.

Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the...

You know” – Hale’s breath was warm against Kat’s ear in the chilly ballroom- “I don’t know that both of us really have to be here….” The slide changed. While hundreds of mathematicians waited with...

Disconnecting from one’s community is a personal choice, of course, but it ends up having social implications [“The Basement,” The Awl, Feb 5, 2015].

If this society ascribes roles to Black men which they are not allowed to fulfill, is it Black women who must bend and alter our lives to compensate, or is it society that needs changing?

There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire. You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of...

The Rakshasa,” said Percy pedantically, “are a different breed altogether from our vampires. Much in the same way that poodles and dachshunds are different breeds of dog. Rakshasas are reviled in India. Their position as...

Living in a world where people measure their happiness by self-indulgence and decadence, Is like watching a whole society being pushed into the abyss of perpetual decay and aberrations.

We are not like you. We do not glory in having power over our own kind.” Haghuf turned to walk away. Then as an afterthought added over his shoulder, “Or imagining that we do.

We’re making light of all the serious, politically correct stuff that society has created. Basically, Earl redeems himself (after) the mistakes he has made in judging people.

To study the law of contracts is like a triathlon for the mind. You don’t think you can finish and once complete you can’t stand up.

There is nothing to be gained by multiplying social distinctions indefinitely.

This is a diseased world in which it is impossible for anyone to be fully human. One way or another, everyone who lives in the modern world is sick or maladjusted.

If religion is a crutch, then society is the broken foot.

The ways by which you may get your money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earn money ‘merely’ is to be truly idle or worse. If the labourer gets...

And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the chief thing, and that’s everything; nothing...

Don’t give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero’s facade you will find a human being who makes human...

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why?...

For he did not, he would have said, care for women; he never felt at home or at ease with them; and that monstrous creature beginning to be talked about, the New Woman of the...

May God bless all mankind.

When nobody takes a responsibility it’s yours.

Many are the scholars who make it their professional occupation to occupy themselves in this towering edifice of culture, exploring its nook and crannies, developing their responses, making their contributions here and there, and helping...

Whom boasts about his happiness, cause doesn’t got it!

In a world where critical thinking skills are almost wholly absent, repetition effectively leapfrogs the cognitive portion of the brain. It helps something get processed as truth. We used to call it unsubstantiated buy-in. Belief...

I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an’ stuff like that, too; not just word writin’. My ol’ man’ll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa’s gonna...

Jesus revealed a face of God that bothered society profoundly! (Carlos Mesters, p. 122)

Just is not by other men of intelligence that an intelligent an is afraid of being thought a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and ‘bounders’ that a man...

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?

There, in the unconscious, we sleep upon the psyche’s oceanic floor, together like some vast bed of kelp, each wavering strand an individual American, swaying in the currents of national suggestion. In the form of...

We all need someone who invest money or time on us.

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization… One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

I would far prefer to be told simply to go and die. It’s straightforward. But people almost never say, “Die!” Paltry, prudent hypocrites!

The last thing the consumer index wants men and women to do is to figure out how to love one another: The $1.5 trillion retail-sales industry depends on sexual estrangement between men and women, and...

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

It’s all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you...

Ignorance binds people tighter than culture.

We are all connected. When one arm or foot is poisoned, the whole body becomes infected.

Society in its wisdom has found ways of constructing refuges of all kinds, for since it has been disposed to make the love-life a pastime, it has also felt obliged to trivialize it, to make...