Millicent Fenwick Quotes

The deeper changes wrought by the end of a particular outlaw culture: something will come of that ... and it won't be what we expect.

It takes more than a few generations to change a human nation. Those who are intent to bring (change) will do so.

I'm interested in Scotland now and then, how it's changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?

But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations.

Things change in different countries as people grow, and as generations change.

When cultural change succeeds, it succeeds because it's so embedded in what we do that we don't have to think about.

I'm fascinated by how much has changed from one generation to another. There are young people growing up now for whom apartheid is just a distant memory and the idea of military service is an abstract notion.

We now know how things were in the '60s and how things have changed, but I don't think we appreciate how much things have changed.

Great changes cannot take place in the minds of generations of men without a corresponding change in their external symbols. There must be a harmony between the inner and the outward condition of human beings, and the progress of the one must keep pace with the progress of the other.

I think culture is a very challenging thing to reverse.

I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic.

Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.

I like to think about society as being a flock of birds: There seems to be a common consciousness in different time periods, and the new common consciousness reacts to the old standards.

Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past

The process by which civilization, as an abstract entity distinct from the societies in which it is embodied, dies or is reborn is a very significant one.

But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times . . .

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

If this analysis of history is approximately sound and if the future like the past is to be crowded with changes and exigencies, then it is difficult to believe that the feminism of the passing generation, already hardened into dogma and tradition, represents the completed form of woman's relations to work, interests and society.

It's important to begin to even consider whether countries can become something that looks very different because people tend to take their countries for granted.

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.

I feel blessed in the knowledge that I probably belong to the last generation that will remember what we call "traditional America."

We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.

But a people unable to reform will not be able to preserve its old culture either.

Culture is a product of law. And laws create norms for society. This is why anyone who wants to change the culture of a country must try to change the norms of the country.

There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture . . .