Societal Shift Quotes

The family breaks down as more and more women go out to work. How can one talk about family life when the man and woman work different shifts, and where the wife does not even have the time to prepare a decent meal for her offspring? How can one talk of parents when the mother and father are out working all day and cannot find the time to spend even a few minutes with their children?.... Even if housework disappears, you may argue, there are still the children to look after. But here too, the workers’ state will come to replace the family, society will gradually take upon itself all the tasks that before the revolution fell to the individual parents.

The rise of what's called Islamic fundamentalism is to a significant extent a result of the collapse of secular nationalist alternatives which were either discredited internally or destroyed, leaving few other options. Something like that may be true of American society.

There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives.

It's a very telling thing when you have children. You have to be there for them, you've got to set an example, when you're not sure what your example is, and anyway the world is changing so fast you don't know what is appropriate anymore.

We used to think earthly life was horrible and paradise awaited us when we died. Now we have made earthly life into a paradise and we fear death.

We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It's very materialistic. It's full of desire and luxury goods.

Doesn't anybody stay in one place any more?

Society was passing through a most critical stage. The French Revolution had diseased the imagination and unsettled the understanding of men everywhere. The old foundations of social order, loyalty, tradition, habit, reverence for antiquity, were everywhere shaken, if not subverted. The authority of the past was gone.

Information technology and the Internet are rapidly transforming almost every aspect of our lives - some for better, some for worse.

I have no hesitation in believing that less than twenty years ago a man would have been mobbed and the printing office torn down for printing and publishing anything like ‘The Emancipator,’ whereas it now meets the approbation of thousands, and is patronized perhaps at least equal to any other in the state. But little by little, times are, much changed here, until societies, of respectable citizens have arisen to plead the cause of abolition; and instead of it being a disgrace to a man to be a member of these societies, it is rather a mark of the goodness of his heart, and redounds to his honor.

The verdict of history ... is that worn out ideas have never risen to power among a people who have worn them out.

It was obvious that computers were going to become more a part of our lives, and they will continue to unless something dramatic happens to change that.

I am, by instinct, wary of revolutions. The gathering of the masses fills me with trepidation.

First I would probably place men at the bottom of the food chain. On a grander scale, I would say they're reacting to change. Feminism has got to be part of that.

I think that revolution means change. And if somebody feels like there's nothing wrong, everything's great even when it ain't, why would they ask for a revolution? Just stick the tubes into me and just pump away.

As society changes, as politics change, as people change, certain songs still seem to resonate.

Feminism is the most revolutionary idea there has ever been. Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche, more profound than anything Marx dreamed of. It means valuing parenthood as much as we value banking.

Wars of any magnitude release powerful social and economic forces which can change the whole face of the world.

It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it.

Women are outperforming men in almost every sphere of life in our society and the women of East Indian ancestry are no exception to this rule. They have broken the cultural mould.

In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, but now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.

I think generationally, as human progress does its thing, we are constantly impressed by the upcoming generation.

In revolutionary times the rich are always the people who are most afraid.

All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities for life. Change is the one constant in human history.

Industrialisation, mass transit, and the Internet are technological revolutions that have reshaped lives, nations, and the planet.