"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
— John Lennon

"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?"
— Mahatma Gandhi

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
— Thomas Jefferson

"(Asked what he thought of Western civilization) 'I think it would be a good idea.'"
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice."
— Charles Bukowski (Women)

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."
— Robert E. Howard

"Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room."
— Bill Gates

"A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot..."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine."
— Honoré de Balzac

"All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess.'"
— Marcel Duchamp

"When humor goes, there goes civilization."
— Erma Bombeck

"California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom."
— Don DeLillo (White Noise)

"The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community."
— Susan Sontag (At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches)

"The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are.'"
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although sometimes you have to hunt around."
— Dave Barry

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency."
— Theodore Roosevelt

""Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." she held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!""
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"No social stability without individual stability."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

"I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!"
— Jean Anouilh (Antigone)

"A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself."
— Arthur Miller

"Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap."
— Barbara Jordan

"Participating in Society in not a thing one can do naturally; one has to rehearse for it."
— Michel Faber (The Crimson Petal and the White)

"...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 calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies..."
— Thomas Hardy

"If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior."
— Robert Bringhurst (The Solid Form Of Language: An Essay On Writing And Meaning)

"Someone ... tell us what's important, because we no longer know."
— Richard Ford (A Multitude of Sins)

"Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric."
— A.C. Grayling (The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life)

"We'll just have to get along. That's what people do, you know? They just get along. And try to help each other."
— Stephen King (Cujo)

"It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such."
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden and Civil Disobedience)

"Les enfants sont par définition des apprentis, et apprendre est l'activité humaine qui nécessite le moins de manipulation par autrui. La majeure partie de l'apprentissage n'est pas le resultat de l'instruction. Elle serait plutôt le résultat d'une participation dans un environnement chargé de sens."
— Ivan Illich

"In a truly rational society, the best of us would be teachers, and the rest would have to settle for something else."
— Lee Iaccoca

"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
— Woodrow Wilson

"The elephants are dancing on the graves of squeeling mice."
— Cream

"Management, a science? Of course not, it's just a waste-paper basket full of recipes which provided the dish of the day during a few years of plenty and economic growth. Now the recipes are inappropriate and the companies which persist in following them will disappear."
— Leon Courville

"Dans les sociétés vernaculaires, l'éducation est homéotélique vis-à-vis de Gaïa"
— Edouard Goldsmith

"L'éducation est un processus culturel (...) par lequel chaque nouvel individu est transformé en membre à part entière d'une société humaine particulière, partageant avec les autres membres une culture particulière."
— Margaret Mead

"Nous sommes nés en des temps de chaos, où chacun a l'esprit confus. On voudrait rester à l'écart de ce monde de fous, mais ce serait refuser sa part de butin."
— Chanson javanaise moderne

"La santé est une propriété permanente, potentiellement mesurable par la capacité de l'individu à se remettre des agressions, qu'elles soient chimiques, physiques, infectieuses, psychologiques ou sociales."
— J. Ralph Audy

"Expect poison from the standing water."
— William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: A Facsimile in Full Color)

"Toute transformation sociale (...) s'est fondée sur de nouvelles bases métaphysiques et idéologiques; ou plutôt, sur des émotions et intuitions plus profondes, dont l'expression rationalisée prend la forme du cosmos et de la nature de l'homme."
— Lewis Mumford

"[Medieval] Art was not just a static element in society, or even one which interacted with the various social groups. It was not simply something which was made to decorate or to instruct — or even to overawe and dominate. Rather, it was that and more. It was potentially controversial in ways both similar and dissimilar to its couterpart today. It was something which could by its force of attraction not only form the basis for the economy of a particular way of life, it could also come to change that way of life in ways counter to the original intent. Along with this and because of this, art carried a host of implications, both social and moral, which had to be justified. Indeed, it is from the two related and basic elements of justification and function — claim and reality — that Bernard approaches the question of art in the Apologia."
— Conrad Rudolph

"La recherche d'une réalité communautaire prend la forme d'une opération de sauvetage massive. J'estime que c'est la grande aventure de notre temps, infiniment plus valable pour l'homme que la conquête de l'espace. Elle représente le retour et le renouveau de l'ancienne gnose. Pour ceux qui répondent à l'appel, ce qui se passe dans le monde des sciences, malgré sa place encore considérable dans le politique gouvernementales, perdra de plus en plus son sens existentiel. À leurs yeux, les scientifiques et leurs nombreux émoules feront figure de clergé archaïque, à la liturgie professionnelle absurde, occupé à échanger ses connaissances, soi-disant à la disposition du public, dans le sanctuaire secret de leur église de l'État."
— Theodore Roszak