Quotes about socialism
page 7

“Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Fear, Silence, Waiting

“My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

Family, Family

“What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 68

Education, Way

“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

“Acquaintances, in sort, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: 引爆趨勢 : 小改變如何引發大流行 [Yin bao qu shi: xiao gai bian ru he yin fa da liu xing]

“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.”

Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter

Life, People, World, Soul

“Perfect date material, she thought. A vampire with the social equivalent of road rage.

---Beth about Wrath”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Rage, Perfection

“No social stability without individual stability.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“Social scientists sometimes talk about the concept of "identity". It is the idea that you have a particular vision of the kind of person you are, and you feel awful when you do things that are out of line with that vision.”

Steven D. Levitt (1967) American economist

Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Feeling, Idea, Personality

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: The Thomas Sowell Reader, New York: NY, Basic Books (2011) p. 144, Forbes magazine, "The survival of the left" (Sept. 8, 1997)

Failure

“Kids are baby goats. They're cute and they have redeeming social value. You are definitely not kids.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Baby

“Striving for social justice is the most valuable thing to do in life.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Misattributed Source: This appears to originate in April 2014 with an unsourced entry in picturequotes: http://www.picturequotes.com/striving-quotes Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Albert Einstein / Misattributed

Life, Justice

“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 26
Source: The Medium is the Massage

Way, Understanding, Knowledge, Change

“Holy solitaries' is a phrase no more consistent with the Gospel than holy adulterers. The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Religion, Christ

“Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.”

Iris Chang book The Rape of Nanking

Source: The Rape of Nanking

People, Evil

“If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

People

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons (October 22, 1945) "Demobilisation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/oct/22/demobilisation#column_1703 Post-war years (1945–1955) Variant: The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

“He wasn't that good looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird”

Karen Chance American writer

Cats, Patience

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Failure, Envy

“The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Women, Change, Dependency

“He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Thinking, Solitude, Time

“But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Three Ways of Meeting Oppression (1958)
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Context: A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

Peace, Problem, Victory

“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

p. 12.
Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 13-14.
Context: Recent focus on the issue of racism has generated discourse but has had little impact on the behavior of white feminists towards black women. Often the white women who are busy publishing papers and books on "unlearning racism" remain patronizing and condescending when they relate to black women. This is not surprising given that frequently their discourse is aimed solely in the direction of a white audience and the focus solely on changing attitudes rather than addressing racism in a historical and political context. They make us the "objects" of their privileged discourse on race. As "objects," we remain unequals, inferiors. Even though they may be sincerely concerned about racism, their methodology suggests they are not yet free of the type of remain intact if they are to maintain their authoritative positions.
Context: Racist stereotypes of the strong, superhuman black woman are operative myths in the minds of many white women, allowing them to ignore the extent to which black women are likely to be victimized in this society and the role white women may play in the maintenance and perpetuation of that victimization.... By projecting onto black women a mythical power and strength, white women both promote a false image of themselves as powerless, passive victims and deflect attention away from their aggressiveness, their power, (however limited in a white supremacist, male-dominated state) their willingness to dominate and control others. These unacknowledged aspects of the social status of many white women prevent them from transcending racism and limit the scope of their understanding of women's overall social status in the United States. Privileged feminists have largely been unable to speak to, with, and for diverse groups of women because they either do not understand fully the inter-relatedness of sex, race, and focus on class and gender, they tend to dismiss race or they make a point of acknowledging that race is important and then proceed to offer an analysis in which race is not considered.

Women, Men, People

“The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.”

Philip G. Zimbardo (1933) American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment

Thinking

“Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Source: Role Models

Hunger, Pleasure, Youth, World

“I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

People, Youth, Way, Study

“Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

Interview in Writers at Work (1988)

“For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)
Context: For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another. As long as this has not been achieved, if we think we are in the stage of building socialism but instead of ending exploitation the work of suppressing it comes to a halt — or worse, is reversed — then we cannot even speak of building socialism.

“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Author’s Note (pp. 276-277)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)

Life, Happiness, People, Disease

“Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Prometheus Rising

Source: Prometheus Rising

Sex

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Men, God, Hate, People

“Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species”

Edward O. Wilson book The Ants

Source: The Ants

“It may well be impossible for people who have lived and prospered under a given social system to imagine the point of view of those who feel it offers them nothing, and who can contemplate its destruction without any particular dismay.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: Submission

People, Feeling, Imagination

“The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the above principles then immediately go into action, a process which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Prometheus Rising

Source: Prometheus Rising

Way

“There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Way, Understanding, Effort, Change

“Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Talking About a Revolution: Interviews with Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, bell hooks, Peter Kwong, Winona LaDuke, Manning Marable, Urvashi Vaid, and Howard Zinn

Hope, Change, Despair

“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

Men, Fear, Help

“You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.”

Bruce Sterling (1954) American writer, speaker, futurist, and design instructor

Money, Sun

“Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Understanding, Christmas

“The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”

Guy Debord book The Society of the Spectacle

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 1, sct. 4.
Source: The Society of the Spectacle

People

“The most elementary of good manners… at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Sadness, Religion, Personality

“I stopped the blade two inches before it touched Andrea’s neck. Because she was my best friend, and sticking knives into your best friend’s windpipe was generally considered to be a social faux pas.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

“To be social is to be forgiving.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Forgiveness

“This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Lie

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Question, Time

“Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each others welfare, social justice can never be attained.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

People, Justice, Sense

“If a couple has their picture taken at a wedding or other social gathering, and the woman looks hot, her guy could be blinking, chewing, or even mid-sneeze, and she’ll still display it on her desk at work.”

Brian P. Cleary (1959) American writer

Guy, Wedding

“No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

World, Reality

“If all people became ghosts my social life would be so over"
- Suze Simon in the Mediator”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Life, People

“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

World, Art

“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope

Way, Communication

“All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Clothes

“It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

People

“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 322
Context: Historically our own culture has relied for the creation of rich and contrasting values upon many artificial distinctions, the most striking of which is sex. It will not be by the mere abolition of these distinctions that society will develop patterns in which individual gifts are given place instead of being forced into an ill-fitting mould. If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

“Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

Children, Sense

“A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

“I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable. I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Love, People

“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Life

“We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

World, Nature

“Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.”

Gary L. Francione (1954) American legal scholar

Change

“A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Why We Can't Wait

Source: Why We Can't Wait

People, Change

“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.”

Ernst Fischer (1899–1972) Austrian literature historian, publicist and writer

Truth, World, Faith, Art

“A man has as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Personality

“This is my social face,” he said lightly. “Don’t confuse it with the animal beneath.”

Elizabeth Hoyt (1970) American writer

Source: Notorious Pleasures

Animals

“We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Behavior, Idea

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Source: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Travel, Time

“Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Way, Appearance

“Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Decision

“These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

"The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/addams6.htm; this piece by Jane Addams was first published in 1892 and later appeared as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) Context: These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Life, Women, Men, People

“I'm no good at anything. Not men. Not social skills. Not work. Nothing.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Men

“Feminism, coveting social power, is blind to women’s cosmic sexual power.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 52

Women

“They want to be natural, the anti-social little beasts. They just don't realize that everyone's good depends on everyone's cooperation.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Nature, Dependency

“I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Fate, Science

“I am a socially awkward mandork. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

“The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic, and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression.”

Gene Sharp book From Dictatorship to Democracy

Source: From Dictatorship to Democracy

Way, Effort

“Friends don't let friends commit social suicide.”

Sonya Sones book What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know

What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know

Suicide

“For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

World

“Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Pleasure, Sleep

“There’s Socialism and Communism and Capitalism and there’s Feminism and Hedonism, and there’s Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism, but I think Narcissism is the system that means the most to me.”

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) American writer

Communication, Thinking

“I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody…”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Wealth

“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Family, Imagination, Loyalty

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Death, Money

“The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Source: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“I swear I've never met a man who has your knack for lack of social grace. If you weren't naturally charming, someone would have stabbed you by now.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Nature

“Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", pages 100-101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=113&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871) Context: As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually through public opinion.

Love, Animals