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...
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: I quite enjoyed the sound of it all. Profit, loss, margins, takeovers, lending, letting, subletting, subdividing, cheating, scamming, fragmenting, breaking away. There was no such thing as society and even if there was, I most...
I think if I ever stopped pushing myself, I would revert quickly to quite repetitive, restrictive behaviour. But in pushing myself and concentrating on what I can do, I think I can contribute to society. And that gives me the desire to keep pushing, ...
Bruce Wayne: Who is he? [implying the man imprisoned in a wooden cage] Henri Ducard: He was a farmer. Then he tried to take his neighbor's land and became a murderer. Now he is a prisoner. Bruce Wayne: What'll happen to him? Henri Ducard: Justice. Cr...
In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived. In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then. In her life she is both celebrant and proof of women's capacity and will to survive, to become, to act, to change self ...
