Social Commentary Quotes

Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?

I can't give you the white picket fence, and if I did, you'd set it on fire.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me...only he's an imbecile.

I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me.

Welcome to Hell. Here's your accordion.

We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

Education...has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

Oh, those hateful sods will never make it to Heaven. They’re all on an express elevator to the gay spit-roast dungeon in Hell. Within five minutes of kicking the bucket, they’ll have demon balls swollen with fiery spunk slapping off their shapeless chins.

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.

I saw America's economy last night, people raiding dumpsters at a higher rate than normal in my home town. Digging through garbage shouldn't be a career. Thanks Democrats. Thanks Republicans.

...human history is full of depressing things like colonization, disease, racism, sexism...inventions of things which they had no idea how to handle (the atomic bomb, the Internet, the semicolon)....And through it all there has always been some truly awful food.

Considering our backgrounds, I found it a strange irony that Ian and I should meet in central Borneo. Both of us were set in motion by the war in Southeast Asia. Ian enlisted. I left the country several weeks before an FBI agent arrived at my parents' front door.

I alternate between feeling sympathetic toward humanity and being a misanthrope. When I'm sympathetic, it usually means I haven't been around people in awhile.

Events cast their shadows ahead; before a harsh winter, wild animals grow thicker fur, and the beaver puts on a thicker layer of fat. What kind of times and what sort of tasks can lie ahead for a generation that must think so harshly, even at such a young age, in order to survive?

What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it.

Before civilization, artists painted for the living. Today, most paint for a living.