societal norms quotes

The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

Everything the working class has been told to do, the rich do not do. That is my message.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

What ‚multiculturalism‘ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.

I truly believe that women should be financially independent from their men. And let’s face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what’s sexy. And men define what’s feminine. It’s ridiculous.

You can say, ‚Well, isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine‘ – well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter, because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

I think a lot of people love to convolute what everyone else does in order to disempower women.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Chinese people need to be controlled; otherwise, they will do whatever they want.

Consciously or unconsciously most of us adhere to what is expected of our role because we realize our social success depends on this. Some may refuse to play this game, but in the end they are marginalized and forced to play the outsider role, with limited options and decreasing freedom as they get older.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

I can’t imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

There will be gay couples; it will exist. It is not very nice that people who are married – who divorce in three seconds – don’t want protection for the others. The legal system should protect everyone, not just the few people who think they are above everybody else because they are married.

Smooth functioning of social life has always depended on the recognition of certain basic limits to behavior. We cannot simply say or do anything we wish, or offend people, without paying consequences – isolation, ostracism, etc.

To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

Housework never really bothered me… what bothered me about it later was that it was expected to be your life… when you’re a housewife, you are constantly interrupted. You have no space in your life. It isn’t the fact that you do the laundry.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Men don’t really like skinny, do they?

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

I have noticed… that men usually leave married women alone and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

The public doesn’t mind people living together without being married, providing they don’t overdo it.

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

I think any man who lets a woman pick what he should wear… I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere as a man. I see these guys, ‚My wife told me to wear this!‘ And I just shake my head.

All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.