Words not only reflect a person's thoughts and beliefs, but, through their use, can shape a person's values, beliefs, and actions, making them prejudiced without them even realizing it. That means it's not just the case that actions speak louder than...
The failure of individual responsibility must be compensated for by a collective response and the consequences of such a failure at the collective level often devolve to individuals. The net result is that a lack of responsibility becomes culturally ...
It is appropriate to speak of the artisans as possessed of wisdom (and not just "skill"), because the biblical writers share the understanding common to most traditional societies that the active form of wisdom is good work. Wisdom does not consist o...
We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird a...
Natural selection favors the forces of psychological denial. The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers. Education can counteract the natural tendency to ...
This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system stil...
Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known so...
I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be men fated to be governed by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society. For that very reason, a freethinker or philosopher today wo...
In the process, what must be spoken meets what cannot be said. Each word is a catalyst, requiring the writer to break out forcefully from another story, from the primitive camp where history, society, and politics converge, to touch upon that 'what' ...
We miss out on meeting so many interesting individuals in our lives because we judge people by what society says is acceptable. "He's not Handsome enough,She's not Beautiful enough." So we ignore them & pass them by. Not knowing we are missing out on...
To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not becau...
Neil: [quoting Henry David Thoreau] "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Dalton: I'll second that. Neil: "To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had com...
John Keating: O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It's from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating, or if you're slightly more daring, O Captain ...
[after hearing "The Introduction to Poetry"] John Keating: Excrement! That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard! We're not laying pipe! We're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand? "I like Byron, I give him a 4...
Todd Anderson: [talking about people listening to him] The point is, that there's nothing you can do about it. So you can just butt out. I can take care of myself just fine. Alright? Neil: [long pause] No. Todd Anderson: What do you mean 'no'? Neil: ...
Yuri Orlov: Enjoy it. Jack Valentine: What? Yuri Orlov: This. Tell me I'm everything you despise. That I'm the personification of evil. That I'm what- responsible for the breakdown of the fabric of society and world order. I'm a one-man genocide. Say...
[to the Turkish court] Billy Hayes: I just wish for once that you could be in my shoes, Mr. Prosecutor, and then you would know something that you don't know: mercy! That the concept of a society is based on the quality of that mercy; its sense of fa...
Caine: Nigga, I know you ain't dumb enough to be showin' niggas the robbery tape, man. What's up with that? O-Dog: Man, cool out, nigga. We just havin' fun with the motherfuckin' tape. Damn, alright, ain't nobody else gonna see the tape. The shit is ...
Blakeney: Sir, I think we should be getting back. Dr. Stephen Maturin: Naval discipline doesn't operate out here, Mr. Blakeney. I must find a cormorant. And should it indeed prove flightless, you can join me at the Royal Society dinner as codiscovere...
Max Bialystock: Bloom, I'm drowning. Other men sail through life, Bialystock has struck a reef. Bloom, I'm going under. I'm condemned by a society that demands success when all I can offer is failure. Bloom, I'm reaching out to you. Don't send me to ...
Crabbin: [inviting Holly Martins to give a lecture at the local Cultural Reeducation Society] We do a little show each week. Last week we had "Hamlet." The week before we had... something. Sgt. Paine: The striptease, sir. Crabbin: Yes, the Hindu danc...
