societal reflection Quotes

Every country has the government it deserves.

As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.

Talking about [Donald] Trump, there's nothing wrong with Trump. He's who he is. It's wrong with us, who let him [win]. That's what's wrong. It's not that he's going to change, but the people who think like him.

Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

Anyday, one can walk down the street in a big city and see a thousand people. Any photographer can photograph these people - but very few photographers can make their prints not only reproductions of the people taken, but a comment upon them - or more, a comment upon their lives - or more still, a comment upon the social order that creates these lives.

Architecture is the very mirror of life.You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Folks can look at this issue and read it and it can feel like medicine, it can feel epidemic. We wanted this to hit people in their gut, and the hope is that by doing that, we can get more people to think more deeply about these issues.

What's really interesting is when you get a brand-new wave that has no connection to anything else. It always reflects society. The flappers would cut the dresses and make them looser, they smoked, their hair was short. It was a rebellion against the corset and the Edwardian era.

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

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

There's almost a Rorschach-test quality about writing about 'Playboy'. What comes out in the press is not so much about me as it is about society.

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins

A nation that does not support and encourage its theater is - if not dead - dying; just as a theater that does not capture with laughter and tears the social and historical pulse, the drama of its people, the genuine color of the spiritual and natural landscape, has no right to call itself theater; but only a place for amusement.

If you say one gets influenced watching a character, I think it's foolish. Cinema reflects society; society rarely reflects cinema.

TV, film, and theater are considered art, and art is a reflection of life. What happens in life includes violence, unfortunately.

I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget.

THEATRE HAS THE POWER TO MOVE, INSPIRE, TRANSFORM AND EDUCATE IN WAYS THAT NO OTHER ART FORM CAN. THEATRE REFLECTS BOTH THE EXTRAORDINARY DIVERSITY OF CULTURES AND OUR SHARED HUMAN CONDITION, IN ALL ITS VULNERABILITY AND STRENGTH.

Comedians are always narrating the story of the people. Always.

This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.

I think professional wrestling will always be a reflection of how society is.

I think people do look to writers to tell the truth in a way that nobody else quite will, not politicians or ministers or sociologists. A writer's job, is to, by way of fiction, somehow describe the way we live. And to me, this seems an important task, very worth doing, and I think also, to the reading public, it seems, even though they might not articulate it, it seems to them something worth doing also.

One of the reasons we do history, in fact, is because it acts as a brake, a control, on our otherwise unbridled enthusiasm for our own ideas.

You've got the Wall Street situation, the sub-prime situation. You've got a black president. We've got wars. We've got unemployment. But the music doesn't reflect that. And I challenge anybody to show me a music that's on the radio that reflects that.

People are mistaken to view cinema as some sort of gimmick. It's very much ingrained in the ways in which we understand each other.