When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions.
The clock, for all its precision in measurement, is a blunt instrument for the psyche and for society. Schedules can replace sensitivity to the mood of a moment, clock time can ride roughshod over the emotions of individuals.
The worst crime of any type of state is just that it always tries to force the rich diversity of social life into definite forms and adjust it to one particular form
Naught can deform the human race Like to the armor's iron brace.
The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.
In insisting, for political purposes, on a sharp division between gay and straight, gay activism, like much of feminism, has become as rigid and repressive as the old order it sought to replace.
The functioning of our society is in a certain way sclerotic.
The culture will not be able to persist in light of the rigid systems of its own innocence.
The German passion for bureaucracy -- for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist -- is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . .
The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger.
The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
I think there's a lot that the larger society could have been taught or can be taught, but I'm not sure - given how unyielding the larger society has been - that much has been learned.
