#commentary

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. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#men

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#human-nature #psychology #social-commentary #nature

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy. ↗

— Alastair Reynolds

#sf #social-commentary #anarchy

In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers’ broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope. ↗

— Aberjhani

#election-year-politics #hate-crimes #hatred #humanity #hypocrisy

It is a sad commentary of our times when our young must seek advice and counsel from "Dear Abby" instead of going to Mom and Dad. ↗

— Abigail Van Buren

#advice #commentary #counsel #dad #dear

You were doing a TV show - you don't realise that you're also making social commentary at the same time. ↗

— Amber Benson

#commentary #doing #making #realise #same

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#first #forty #forty years #give #life

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#decay #english-literature #king #poetry #power

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

— Raegan Butcher

#poetry #prison #social-commentary #sociology #sociology

We're living in a funny world kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard. ↗

— Jim Thompson

#social-commentary #funny