Social Discourse Quotes

About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

Unfortunately, as hate speech has proliferated, no one in Poland has been held responsible. The police take people's statements and dismiss them. This tacit consent has demoralized weakened minds.

I like to think I've changed the centre of gravity on lots of national debates.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.

I think it's a disgrace that some would allow extreme voices in this country to erase our proud heritage.

We need to stop telling each other to shut up. We need to get comfortable with the reality that no one is going to shut up.

When it comes to politics, unless it's an issue that's really close to home and you feel strongly about, I just don't think you should really talk about it.

Films can't change the society; they can simply open the space for the discussion which can lead to social change and can start new forms of social activism.

And one of the three great things in the world is gossip, you know. First there's religion; and then there's science; and there's-and then there's friendly gossip. Those are the three-the three great things.

Rumors are always out there.

Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)

Offendedness is just about the last shared moral currency in our country. And, I'm sorry, but it's really annoying. We don't discuss ideas or debate arguments, we try to figure out who is most offended.

It's a classic error in American discourse: the conflation of race with culture.

I believe if we only are talking to people who agree with us, we are failing in some way to understand our world and our country.

One of the strongest forms of rhetoric in our society is the rhetoric of blame.

We are used to politicians bending facts and logic to fit their aims, but the problem goes well beyond political rhetoric. Our larger discourse is dominated by cultural authorities who want us to believe things that the human mind rebels against—that there is no such thing as biological sex, that the way to fight past discrimination is with present discrimination, that not punishing crime is the way to prevent crime, that words can mean whatever they tell us they mean.

Because I'm a doctor, I know when you have an injury it will heal if it's clean enough to heal; if your injury is dirty, it won't heal. And so when you are talking in societies, we are also talking in healing processes, and for a good healing process, you need to make things right.

Universities used to be places where the major political and social issues of the day could be researched and debated. The results of this careful thought and analysis were used to make political debates in the wider world more realistic and better informed. All that has now been turned on its head. The campus offers not a reasoned corrective to partisan passions, but fierce, one-sided advocacy of dangerous and destructive ideas.

I encourage people to find and use the power of their voices just as much when I do not agree with those voices as when I do agree with them.

Wokeness, for what it's worth, is a buzzword that a lot of people are not truly understanding the depth of. I think sometimes things work their way into the zeitgeist, and they lose their weight. And wokeness is one of those words that has reached that point.

Enjoy most: the prospect of having an impact on the public debate. Irritating liberals is a close second.

[On political correctness:] Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted.

It is good for society to have this introspection.

Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.

An event is not over until everyone is tired of talking about it.