societal roles Quotes

The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.

There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.

I have confidence, not only in this country and her institutions, but in the endurance, capacity, and destiny of my people. We will, as opportunity offers and ability serves, seek our places, sometimes in the field of letters, arts, sciences, and the professions. More frequently mechanical pursuits will attract and elicit our efforts; more still of my people will find employment and livelihood as the cultivators of the soil.

The functions of the family in a highly differentiated society are not to be interpreted as functions directly on behalf of the society, but on behalf of personality.

Adults are obsolete children.

The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I’ve ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.

In the sibling society, both the adult and the elder get lost, and no one knows where they are.

Man hardly comes in more than two varieties, wherever he is, whatever he does: workers and pimps ... they're either one or the other! ... and inventors, the worst kind of jobholder! ... they stand condemned! ... the writer who doesn't pimp along, peacefully plagiarizing, who doesn't pump out the pop stuff, he's had it! ... everybody hates him!

We're living at a time when people are questioning what it means to be male in modern society, and I'm finding it very helpful to explore it through these roles.

Some make the world go round; others watch it turn.

It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.

Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherman fish.

To assign to everybody his proper place in society is the task of the consumers. Their buying and abstention from buying is instrumental in determining each individual's social position.

Resolved, That all laws which prevent women from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little world of interests, composed of stormy passions and conflicting atoms

What I see is not a world of male oppression and female victimization, but an internation conspiracy by women to keep from men the knowledge of men's own frailty. A strange maternal protectiveness is at work.

More than a career, I feel that I've got a function. I see things in a much more holistic way. Some people bake the bread, and some people write the songs.

Historically and culturally the Mongol women were very strong, they contributed as much as the men to their society, their community. Other than upper body strength, I think they were equal to the men. To compensate for the lesser upper body strength they had to be smarter, they had to think more, they had to consider things more carefully.

Whenever we see anyone in a high or low position, male or female, they differ only in appearance, dress, behavior, and status. In essence they are all equal--they all experience problems in their lives.

Owing to cultural beliefs, girls have been taught to be small, disappear and not take our full place in society. But that is not what we are meant to be.

I'm really a very fifties housewife.

People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots... in fact I think they have to be... a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement.

We need to leave to the market and society what they can do well.

Ninety-five percent of people who walk the earth are simply inert. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are people who do what they say they can do.