#society

A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols! ↗

— Ludwig von Mises

#politics #religion #society #superstition #violence

Odo had not tried to renew the basic relationships of music, when she renewed the relationships of men. She had always respected the necessary. The Settlers of Anarres had left the laws of man behind them, but had brought the laws of harmony along. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#society #men

He(Prophet Muhammad) was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. ↗

— Reverend B. Smith

#atheist #bodyguard #caesar #christian #divine

Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding: both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society. ↗

— Helen Fielding

#freaks #gay-people #single-women #society #thirties

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#capitalism #corruption #government #history #oppression

I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#complacency #ethics #independence #politics #proactivity

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions." (Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953) ↗

— Albert Einstein

#dissent #equanimity #expressing #knowledge #opinions

A basic theme for the anarch is how man, left to his own devices, can defy superior forces – whether state, society, or the elements – by making use of their rules without submitting to them. ‘It is strange,’ Sir William Parry wrote when describing the igloos on Winter Island, ‘it is strange to think that all these measure are taken against the cold – and in houses of ice. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#autonomy #society #anarchism

You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionize society on this lawn?" Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. "No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you were serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#revolutionize #society #anarchism

In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#society #solitude #anxiety