#society

In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us with an excellent laboratory for gaining such an understanding. ↗

— Roger D. Woodard

#history #humanity #humanity-and-society #mythology #religion

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

When Republicans recently charged the President with promoting 'class warfare,' he answered it was 'just math.' But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality. Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not. President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are. ↗

— Robert B. Reich

#class-warfare #conservatism #economics #liberalism #mathematics

THE CORRECTION, when it finally came, was not an overnight bursting of a bubble but a much more gentle letdown, a year-long leakage of value from key financial markets, a contraction too gradual to generate headlines and too predictable to seriously hurt anybody but fools and the working poor. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#society #economy

In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in fear of God; albeit, the true foundation should be one's clinging to God in fear of God. ↗

— Criss Jami

#belief #clinging #conservatism #conservative #essence

From the newsstands a dozen models smiled up at her from a dozen magazine covers, smiled in thin-faced, high-cheekboned agreement to Kessa's new discovery. They knew the secret too. They knew thin was good, thin was strong; thin was safe. ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#eating-disorders #happy #models #skinny #society

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens. ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#democratic #democratic society #functions #health #may

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#politics #society #political-philosophy

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. ↗

— John Rawls

#individuals #justice #liberalism #philosophy #social-institutions

At one of the annual conventions of the American Society for Aesthetics much confusion arose when the Society for Anesthetics met at the same time in the same hotel. ↗

— Rudolf Arnheim

#american society #annual #arose #confusion #conventions