Tim Matheson Quotes

An American tragedy in which we all have played a part.

We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

Over the past few years, many of us have increasingly begun to question the direction and meaning of our society as it has developed over the past several centuries.

If we say, 'The government sucks,' we're kind of saying that we suck.

The only reality is our society, and I mean this seriously, Western Society is a very sick society.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

The classical case is that of the starving man who steals a loaf of bread. That he should be allowed to go free is understandable enough; but it is less understandable that 'society's' obligation not to let him starve should devolve upon one baker chosen at random and not on society as a whole.

We ought to remain skeptical of our own institutions.

Conservatives have rightly attacked rap for its misogyny, violence and over-the-top vulgarity. But it is important to remember that this music is a fairly accurate message from a part of society where human connections are fractured and impossible, so fraught with disappointments and pain that only an assault on human feeling itself can assuage.

It's not just that government has failed us. It's not just that we have failed ourselves. It's government. It's individuals. It's sort of everything in between, from families and communities and neighborhoods, churches and so forth.

We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.

I guess as far as leftists are concerned, the United States can't qualify as a 'cultured society' simply because we've actually created a society that works.

A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.

Few are guilty, but all are responsible.

So when I say we had been the cowards, yes, that's what I meant, we as a society. And that's everybody, including myself. I had been screaming about the drug war and this war and other wars. I should have been more on terrorism, too. So should you, so should everybody.

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

I'm a controversial artist, one who dares to have an opinion and bothers to create music and videos that challenge people's ideas in a world that is watered-down and hollow. In my work I examine the America we live in, and I've always tried to show people that the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue – it's been happening every day for a long time.

It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.

Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own.

When you leave people behind, and those people who are left behind, it's not their fault, it's the leaders of the institutions. There's always going to be an elite. You can have an elite in a communist society. It is the leaders, something went wrong, and the leaders collectively are responsible.

...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.

Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.