Groups Today Quotes & Sayings

Look, the center right coalition in American politics today is best understood as a coalition of groups and individuals that on the issue that brings them to politics what they want from the government is to be left alone. — Grover Norquist

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups ... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. — Philip K. Dick

The real illness of the American city today, and especially of the deprived groups within it, is voicelessness. — John Henry Cox

One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview - not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The really striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases ... but people prefer reassurance to research. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I wanted to do something that dealt with more of paranormal techniques that wasn't a horror movie. It is an action movie that deals with a special operations group. But if a Tier One team went in to take out Bin Laden today, if you had those kind of abilities, of course you would use that kind of group. And it was more going into that arena. And I wanted to make it feel more like, grounded, as if we had this ability. — Len Wiseman

Today different ethnic groups and different nations come together due to common sense. — Dalai Lama

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The poverty argument is especially weak. In the 1950s, when segregation was legal, overt racism was rampant, and black poverty was much higher than today, black crime rates were lower and blacks comprised a smaller percentage of the prison population. And then there is the experience of other groups who endured rampant poverty, racial discrimination, and high unemployment without becoming overrepresented in the criminal justice system. — Jason L. Riley

James Madison made clear in Federalist 51 that that this elaborate structure - today often derided as " gridlock " - was created to protect individual freedom against oppression by the majority or by powerful interest groups who exploit government power for their own purposes. — Anonymous

Today it feels as if rock'n'roll has sort of turned in on its self, kids are 'rockin' to the same groups their parents do/did. We've seen it recently with The Stone Roses reunion shows, quite unique but is it healthy. Wasn't the 60's about rebelling against the tastes of your parents? — Andrew Loog Oldham

Today the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of all of us. — George W. Bush

Today it's something about hallucinogenic tea, but tomorrow it could be something that Roman Catholics or Southern Baptists or a number of groups need some accommodation in relation to a federal law. — Charles Haynes

Today, we will hear from federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, who will discuss the problem of ELF and ALF and law enforcement's reaction to their dangerous and destructive tactics. It is these tactics, particularly the widespread use of arson, which makes ELF and ALF the #1 domestic terror concern over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups. — James Inhofe

It took about six years to get the Black Lung stuff. It didn't come just instantly. Sometimes, I see lobby groups, today, upset because they work the whole session and nothing happens. — Richard Grimes

The Thai people are pathologically shy. Combine that with a reluctance to lose face by giving a wrong answer, and it makes for a painfully long [ESL] class. Usually I ask the students to work on exercises in small groups, and then I move around and check their progress. But for days like today, when I'm grading on participation, speaking up in public is a necessary evil. "Jao," I say to a man in my class. "You own a pet store, and you want to convince Jaidee to buy a pet." I turn to a second man. "Jaidee, you do not want to buy that pet. Let's hear your conversation."
They stand up, clutching their papers. "This dog is reccommended," Jao begins.
"I have one already," Jaidee replies.
"Good job!" I encourage. "Jao, give him a reason why he should buy your dog."
"This dog is alive," Jao adds.
Jaidee shrugs. "Not everyone wants a pet that is alive."
Well, not all days are successes ... — Jodi Picoult

We have to separate here the church in its broad sense. We have Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox churches. The Catholic church is a corporation like a chief executive. A fairly homogenous operation. Today its attitude toward anti-Semitism is much more severe than it's ever been. The Catholic Church today is much less the problem than the other groups. — Manfred Gerstenfeld

The venerable Robert E. Lee has taken some vicious hits, as dishonest or misinformed advocates among political interest groups and in academia attempt to twist yesterday's America into a fantasy that might better service the political issues of today. — Jim Webb

[Medieval] Art was not just a static element in society, or even one which interacted with the various social groups. It was not simply something which was made to decorate or to instruct - or even to overawe and dominate. Rather, it was that and more. It was potentially controversial in ways both similar and dissimilar to its couterpart today. It was something which could by its force of attraction not only form the basis for the economy of a particular way of life, it could also come to change that way of life in ways counter to the original intent. Along with this and because of this, art carried a host of implications, both social and moral, which had to be justified. Indeed, it is from the two related and basic elements of justification and function - claim and reality - that Bernard approaches the question of art in the Apologia. — Conrad Rudolph

Artists are looking for a new modernity that would be based on translation: What matters today is to translate the cultural values of cultural groups and to connect them to the world network. This "reloading process" of modernism according to the twenty-first-century issues could be called altermodernism, a movement connected to the creolisation of cultures and the fight for autonomy, but also the possibility of producing singularities in a more and more standardized world. — Nicolas Bourriaud

The globalization that characterizes today's economics goes beyond or eludes the sovereignty of individual states, and thus the power of their rulers. It is not they, but rather financial groups in control of vast amounts of capital, who decide upon their vertiginous passage through nations, without taking into account the serious crises they might generate. — Patricio Aylwin

The proliferation of new music groups and individual performers focusing on new music today is heartening. On the one hand the culture is very resistant to new things, and yet it continues to change and grow. — Michael Hersch

Our country today is at a cross-point of several crises that were triggered by three groups of causes: the effects of the 2008 world crisis, the external political and economic pressure, and the internal problems and constraints that have built up in our economy — Dmitry Medvedev

Two erroneous impressions ... seem to be current among certain groups of uninformed persons. The first is that religion today stands for mediaeval theology; the second that science is materialistic and irreligious. — Robert Andrews Millikan

Remember back then we thought about al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a few other places? well, we've seen al Qaeda metastasize. It is now a global scourge. And you have the ascendancy of ISIL. The combination of those two groups
their appeal to the lone wolfs and we see them acting in Belgium and in France and in Canada and the United States so the threat factors and the nature of the threats are far more complicated and far more serious today than on September 12, 2001. — Tom Ridge

Today's dissenters mainly focus their attention and expend their energies on the most inconsequential of trivia ... Allegedly serious intellectuals quibble endlessly over such ridiculous trivialities ... In the meantime, the public is lulled into a perilous somnolence, spoon-fed pap, and palpable untruths, many of which are turned out by special-interest and pressure groups and well organized propaganda machines. — J. Paul Getty

The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — H.L. Mencken

Today age segregation has passed all sane limits. Not only are fifteen-year-olds isolated from seventy-year-olds but social groups divide those in high school from those in junior high, and those who are twenty from those who are twenty-five. There are middle-middle-age groups, late-middle-age groups, and old-age groups - as though people with five years between them could not possibly have anything in common. — Suzanne Gordon

It is not possible in this culture today to hold up to public pillory and ridicule any group - whether blacks, American Indians, women, homosexuals, Poles, or any of a number of other groups that have been discriminated against in the past. However, the one group you can hold up to public mockery and pillory without fear of reprisal is evangelical Christians. — Michael Novak

Today it is hardly possible for any group to remain so isolated from others who have different values. Therefore it is necessary today for the individual to find support within himself. . . This strength within himself - through access to his own real needs and feelings and the possibility of expressing them - thus becomes crucially important for him on the one hand, and on the other made enormously more difficult through living in contact with various different value systems. These factors can probably explain the rapid increase of depression in our time and also the general fascination with various groups. — Alice Miller

We don't do focus groups - that is the job of the designer. It's unfair to ask people who don't have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design. — Jonathan Ive

Today, the law is a crazy quilt of provisions and clauses that very often have little to do with securing general happiness but instead are designed to secure the particular happiness of various advocacy groups, politicians and bureaucrats. — Joel Miller

So next time you hear a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans, for a moment at least see if you can understand his problem: He is heeding an ancient call that - however dangerous, obsolete, and maladaptive it may be today - once benefitted our species. — Carl Sagan

I think that if the political and social movement groups and organizations that operate in this country today had the same kind of energetic commitment that the medical marijuana people have, many things could change in this country. — John Trudell

Until the emergence of the New Left in the 1960s, in order to extend its political influence the Communist party had to establish front organizations or infiltrate and take over established political groups. Today such tactics are much less necessary, for Communists are welcome in the radical movement and can freely participate in its activities. More important, the goals of Old and New Left groups are largely identical. Both work for an end to American "interventionism" in the Third World and for dismantling of what they call the "national security state. — Guenter Lewy

Hate radio, hate speech, hate groups, hate crimes really don't fit in, in the America that we know today. — Kweisi Mfume

In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America, and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. - — Peter Singer

Today's readers can be roughly divided into two groups, those who accept the fantasy villains of childhood, as in the James Bond stories and Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and those who insist on credibility. — Sol Stein

Today's Democrats are little more than a collection of narrow interest groups-unions, tort lawyers, minorities headed by an ossified leadership. They are clever, tenacious and increasingly nasty in defending their perks, as establishments typically are ... — Robert L. Bartley

Community, a place of healing and growth ...
There are more and more groups today oriented towards issues and causes ... They can become very aggressive and divide the world between oppressors and the oppressed, the good and the bad. There seems to be a need in human beings to see evil and combat it outside oneself, in order not to see it inside oneself.
The difference between a community and a group that is only issue-oriented, is that the latter see the enemy outside the group. The struggle is an external one; and there will be a winner and a loser. The group knows it is right and has the truth, and wants to impose it. The members of a community know that the struggle is inside of each person and inside the community; it is against all the powers of pride, elitism, hate and depression that are there and which hurt and crush others, and which cause division and war of all sorts. The enemy is inside, not outside. — Jean Vanier

A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy. Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a
totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the true name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive rerouting of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation. — Peter Ludlow

Putin's Russia is clearly the biggest and most dangerous threat facing the world today, but it is not the only one. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are (despite the latter's name) stateless and without the vast resources and weapons of mass destruction Putin has at his fingertips. The — Garry Kasparov

There is a striking feature of the twentieth century ... the musical creation of the 20th century is qualitatively different from the 18th century, in that it lacks that immediate access or short-term access that was true of the past ... I have no doubt that if we took two children of today two groups and taught one of them Mozart Haydn & Beethoven and the other Schoenberg and post Schoenbergian music, that there would be very substantial difference in their capacity to comprehend and deal with it, and that may reflect, and in fact if that's correct it would reflect, something about our innate musical capacities. — Noam Chomsky

Was Article 370 promised at the time of the signing of the IoA? If Article 370 is repealed, would J&K cease to be a part of India, as the National Conference and some separatist groups are claiming today? — Anonymous

They don't encourage quality today. When I was coming along, Columbia Records would sit with you and assume it would take two or three albums to get the act where it needed to be. Then the company would structure its promotion based on one, two or three years. They encouraged quality and innovation - that's why groups like the Beatles would use sitars, string orchestras and so forth. — Ramsey Lewis

I have an optimism about what people are willing to do. The greatest force in the world today, believe it or not, are these countless groups of people in every country almost ... that are doing things to protect their local environment and to try and protect the earth. — Peter Cundall

Today, the media dictatorship is becoming a substitute to military dictatorship. The big economic groups are using the media and decide who can speak, who the good guy is and who the bad guy is ... — Danny Glover

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates - which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name. — Narendra Modi

I was never really attached to a clique, and I wanted to be in all the different groups; I was never a one-group kind of person. I think that's still part of my personality today. — Katy Perry

They forget that those tiny little hands in the manger, those tiny little hands embraced by Simeon, those hands were made so that nails might be driven through them. Those baby feet, not yet able to walk, they were made to walk up Golgotha to be nailed to the cross. The head of baby Jesus was made so that someday wicked men would press down a crown of thorns into it, drawing his precious blood. This baby's soft tummy would someday be violently ripped open by a spear. So many forget that the manger leads to the cross. Jesus was born to die and when we speak about that, we find rejection by so many. When we speak about why he had to die, when we speak about our sin and the wrath of God, people turn off and tune out. When you see the Messiah in the big picture of our salvation, he is a divisive figure. He divides people into two groups: unbelievers and believers. It was that way in his day and still is today. — Anonymous

Most groups today aren't groups. In a true group all the members create the arrangements among themselves. — Robby Krieger

Society today is so organised that every individual group has the power to disrupt it. How is their power to be channelled into constructive channels? — James Callaghan

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago. — Bob Newhart

Look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups today. I cannot guarantee that you'll find religions as the dominant labels for in-groups and out-groups. But it's a good bet. — Richard Dawkins

The similarities between groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and USSR are too numerous and fundamental to be ignored. Both groups are driven by a totalitarian vision. The followers of Karl Marx envisioned a world transformed into a workers' paradise in which all other classes had been destroyed and only one party, the Communist Party, was in control. Today's jihadists also have a universal vision. They look forward to a global caliphate in which all have submitted to the will of Allah and live as Muslims, the infidels and apostates having been slain. Both visions are exclusive, absolutist, and totalitarian. They are predicated on a 'them or us' vision of how the world must be. There is no possibility for peaceful coexistence with the 'other'. — Sebastian Gorka

To be an effective organisation, the structure of the organisation must be willing to adapt to a network model, leaving the old hierarchy model behind. We see the efficacy of the network model daily in many areas of our lives, and this greatly challenges the old from-top-to-down hierarchical model that many organisations have a hard time letting go of. But I suppose at the end of the day, it is a matter of survival. Simply put, in order to survive, one must adapt and to adapt today, means to take on a more networked approach to doing things in organisations, groups, companies and even in society as a whole (including politics). So in other words, in order for society in all of its forms from big to small, to move forward strongly, it must adapt to a framework that sees itself as a network rather than a hierarchy. — C. JoyBell C.

Is commonplace today to find large groups of people who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of all the basic necessities of its citizens. Benjamin Franklin, however, wrote: To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity; it is godlike; but, if we provide encouragement for laziness, and supports for folly, may we not be found fighting against the order of God and nature, which perhaps has appointed want and misery as the proper punishments for, and cautions against, as well as necessary consequences of, idleness and extravagance? Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be very circumspect, lest we do more harm than good.3 — Ben Carson

Science and its practice are no longer free and willing today but instead are constantly terrorized by research funding gravy trains and group thinking. This is why science needs defending and it takes courage to cleanse science from those cancerous elements and to bring her forward in its rightful place again. I am humbled and honored by this recognition. — Willie Soon

I think there are many experts who say, in fact, the most powerful nations on earth are more vulnerable today than the weaker nations because they're the targets of so many of these groups that are trying to steal, to buy, to build nuclear weapons. — Queen Noor Of Jordan

The most frequent fallacy by far today, the fallacy that emerges again and again in nearly every conversation that touches on economic affairs, the error of a thousand political speeches, the central sophism of the "new" economics, is to concentrate on the short-run effects of policies on special groups and to ignore or belittle the long-run effects on the community as a whole. — Henry Hazlitt

I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. You can talk a lot about sex (or its lack) but not about the feelings that are keeping women from sleeping with their husbands. You can talk about society's lack of "appreciation" of mother's and the need for more social validation
but not about policy that might actually make life better. You cannot really challenge the American culture of rugged individualism. — Judith Warner

Billions of years before twelve step groups, God committed shotgun suicide. Today wall scrapings share His gratitude stories. — Brian Spellman

Some of the worst violence in the world today between estranged religious and ethnic groups happens not on the battlefields. It happens smack in the middle of living rooms and between people who share a lot, who have a lot in common. — Miroslav Volf

It's in that tradition that we're here today, and we look to soup because there's no force on the globe that brings people together on a daily basis with the same consistency and manner than the cultivation, preparation and eating of food. Food affords us the opportunity to touch everyone in our community, to address the needs of all groups - food is the intersection of the most pressing issues of our time. — Sam Kass

Development is among the most important long-term multilateral agendas existing today. As we all know, lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. — Pal Schmitt

Every four years, the Republican Party pines for another Reagan. But Ronald Reagan, Governor of California for eight years, couldn't get elected in today's not-so-Golden State. Jerry Brown, Governor Moonbeam back in the Seventies, now presides as Governor Twilight, lead vampire of a malign alliance of unionized bureaucrats and a swollen dependency class that maintains them in office at the expense of a remorselessly shrinking productive class. As the nation's demographic profile trends ever more Californian perhaps Norquist's predictions of naturally conservative Hispanics pining for a new Coolidge will come to fruition. Or perhaps Bob Beckel's more crudely determinative analysis will prove correct
that, in a multicultural society, jostling identity groups will stick with the party of ethnocultural spoils. — Mark Steyn

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Today many medications act across diagnostic groups. Alliance effects also transcend specific psychotherapy methods. Both may be affecting profound psychopathological processes. — Leston Havens

If humanity today succeeds in combining the new scientific capacities with a strong ethical dimension, it will certainly be able to promote the environment as a home and a resource for ... all ... and will be able to eliminate the causes of pollution and to guarantee adequate conditions of hygiene and health for small groups as well as for vast human settlements. — Pope John Paul II

There are complaints that it's hard to remember what you can say and what you can't, which words are 'in' for certain groups and which words are not. And yet we started out learning that the 'kitty' on the sidewalk was actually a squirrel, we learned to differentiate between fire trucks and school buses, and many people today know the difference between linguini, fettucini, and rotini. The same people who say they can't remember the 'right' terms in referring to people are often whizzes at remembering which professional sports teams have moved where and are now called what. — Rosalie Maggio

I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups. — Michael Horton

The government has departments to deal with the special interest groups that make themselves heard and felt. A Department of Agriculture cares for the farmers' needs. There is a Department of Health, Education and Welfare. There is a Department of the Interior - in which the Indians are included. Is the farmer, the doctor, the Indian, the greatest problem in America today? No - it is the black man! There ought to be a Pentagon-sized Washington department dealing with every segment of the black man's problems. — Malcolm X

Today science prevails not because of its comparative merits, but because the show has been rigged in its favour ... It reigns supreme because some past successes have led to institutional measures (education; role of experts; role of power groups such as the AMA) that prevent a comeback of the rivals. — Paul Feyerabend

During World War II, the University of Minnesota's Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene conducted what scientists and relief workers still regard today as a benchmark study of starvation. Partly funded by religious groups, including the Society of Friends, the study was intended to help the Allies cope with released concentration-camp internees, prisoners of war, and refugees. The participants were all conscientious objectors who volunteered to lose 25 percent of their body weight over six months. The experiment was supervised by Dr. Ancel Keys (for whom the K-ration was named). The volunteers lived a spare but comfortable existence at a stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota. — Nathaniel Philbrick

The German people of today bear no guilt. Why are the German people not permitted the right to defend themselves? Why are the crimes of one group emphasized so greatly, instead of highlighting the great German cultural heritage? Why should the Germans not have the right to express their opinion freely? — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Today, only two groups in the United States have total immunity from lawsuits: foreign diplomats and HMOs. We believe it's time to end diplomatic immunity for HMOs. Holding them accountable is the only way to guarantee that you get the health care your family deserves. — Tom Harkin

The whole reputation of being a rock guitar player, I could really care less about it. Still, when I hear new groups today I do occasionally hear something where I think ... ahh, I've heard that lick before. — Tom Verlaine