Social Breakdown Quotes & Sayings

Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today. — Theodore Kaczynski

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. ROMANS 12:21 NOVEMBER 22 People talk about the evils of our society - the breakdown of morality, the rising incidence of crime, the growing paganism of our generation, and the dishonesty rampant in human affairs. Sometimes people say, "It's so bad that you can never do anything about it. These things are so deeply rooted in the wickedness of human nature that you can never eradicate them. It's an impossibility." It is my humble judgment that the remedy for these social impossibilities is for individuals to be so stimulated and motivated, to become so identified with God, that they become part of His process of overcoming impossiblilities. "Here I stand; I can do no other," said Martin Luther. It was he himself, individually, who stood for principles so forcefully that he initiated great changes in the social order. Individuals overcome impossibilities. — Norman Vincent Peale

Father Dmitry had thought he had been serving his nation by spreading trust, and fighting abortion and despair, but, in doing so, he was defying the state. And that was not allowed. That was why he had to be crushed. His fate parallels the fate of his whole nation. Through the twentieth century, the government in Moscow taught the Russians that hope and trust are dangerous, inimical and treacherous. That is the root of the social breakdown that has caused the epidemic of alcoholism, the collapsing birth rate, the crime and the misery. — Oliver Bullough

In America, Rousseauism has turned Freud's conflict-based psychoanalysis into weepy hand-holding. Contemporary liberalism is untruthful about cosmic realities. Therapy, defining anger and hostility in merely personal terms, seeks to cure what was never a problem before Rousseau. Mediterranean, as well as African-American, culture has a lavish system of language and gesture to channel and express negative emotion. Rousseauists who take the Utopian view of personality are always distressed or depressed over world outbreaks of violence and anarchy. But because, as a Sadean, I believe history is in nature and of it, I tend to be far more cheerful and optimistic than my liberal friends. Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium. Films like Seven Samurai (1954) and Two Women (1961) accurately show the breakdown of social controls as a regression to animal-like squalor. — Camille Paglia

Today, you have 20 percent of the world controlling 80 percent of the Gross Domestic Product; you've got a $30 trillion (US) world economy, and $24 trillion of it is in the developed countries ... These inequities can't exist. So if you are talking about systemic breakdown, I think you have to look in terms of social breakdown. — James Wolfensohn

All too often, government's response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patching' - a case of handing money out, containing problems and limiting the damage but, in doing so, supporting - even reinforcing - dysfunctional behaviour. — Iain Duncan Smith

The terrifying breakdown of social cohesion in the American city, in spite of intense institutionalized police surveillance equipped with every sophisticated aid to public control, illustrates that social behaviour depends upon mutual responsibility rather than upon the policeman. — Colin Ward

YEARS AGO I WORKED ON A GOVERNMENT TASK force studying fatherhood and healthy families. As we met in DC, I learned one of the main causes of the breakdown of the American family was the Industrial Revolution. When men left their homes and farms to work on assembly lines, they disconnected their sense of worth from the well-being of their wives and children and began to associate it with efficiency and productivity in manufacturing. While the Industrial Revolution served the world in terrific ways, it was also a mild tragedy in our social evolution. Raising healthy children became a woman's job. Food was no longer grown in the backyard, it was bought at a store with money earned from the necessary separation of the father. Within a few generations, then, intimacy in family relationships began to be monopolized by females. — Donald Miller

Murders with guns are the No. 1 cause of death for African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34. But talking about race in the context of guns would also mean taking on a subject that can't be addressed by passing a law: the family-breakdown issues that lead too many minority children to find social status and power in guns. — Juan Williams

Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cutbacks in basic social services, especially for young people, the elderly, people of color, and the impoverished.36 At this historical juncture there is a merging of violence and governance along with the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres that have provided the minimal conditions for democracy. This becomes obvious in the emergence of a surveillance state in which social media not only become new platforms for the invasion of privacy but further legitimate a culture in which monitoring functions are viewed as both necessary and benign. Meanwhile, the state-sponsored society of hyper-fear increasingly regards each and every person as a potential terrorist suspect. — Henry A. Giroux

There is an old French curse: may your fondest wish come true. If this treatment is cheap and available to everyone, it will destroy the earth through overpopulation. If it is dear and available only to the very rich, it will cause riots, wars, a breakdown of the social contract. Either way, it will lead directly to human misery. What is the value of a long life, when it is lived in squalor and unhappiness? — Douglas Preston

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed - be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization - will be unavoidable. If we are no longer threatened by world war or by the danger that the absurd mountains of accumulated nuclear weapons might blow up the world, this does not mean that we have definitely won. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions, if they are to be moral, is responsibility. — Vaclav Havel

Women's struggle for equality worldwide is about more than equality between men and women. Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political, and ecological crisis - a global nervous breakdown! Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives and attainable dreams. — Bella Abzug

It seems so easy now to destroy libraries - mainly by taking away all the books - and to say that books and libraries are not relevant to people's lives. There's a lot of talk about social breakdown and alienation, but how can it be otherwise when our ideas of progress remove the centres that did so much to keep people together?
In the North people met in the church, in the pub, in the marketplace, and in those philanthropic buildings where they could continue their education and their interests. Now, maybe the pub is left - but mainly nothing is left.
The library was my door to elsewhere. — Jeanette Winterson

The Tears of Dark Water is not really "about" Somali piracy. It is about the multi-dimensional fallout of Somalia's disintegration over the past two decades. Piracy offered me a narrative framework to explore not only how a hijacking and hostage crisis could end in tragedy but also how the breakdown of social order on land could inspire young Somalis to take to the ocean. — Corban Addison

THE most important divide in America today is class, not race, and the place where it matters most is in the home. Conservatives have been banging on about family breakdown for decades. Now one of the nation's most prominent liberal scholars has joined the chorus. Robert Putnam is a former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the author of "Bowling Alone" (2000), an influential work that lamented the decline of social capital in America. In his new book, "Our Kids", he describes the growing gulf between how the rich and the poor raise their children. Anyone who has read "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray will be familiar with the trend, but Mr Putnam adds striking detail and some excellent graphs (pictured). This is a thoughtful and — Anonymous

This is taking place inside Europe. This is taking place inside a once great nation. The nation that invented democracy. We are on the edge of total social breakdown. And frankly, as far as the euro is concerned and the austerity measures are concerned, the medicine is killing the patient. — Nigel Farage

The idea of the family as a protective haven is a myth, the family unit cannot provide the haven it promises. On the contrary, we can never isolate ourselves from social and political relationships in the world. The places we choose to hide are alawys inseparably connected to the real world, the world they actually might encounter in school, and for some, in neighborhoods. It is not the failure, or the breakdown, of the family which causes our alienation, but the ever-disappointed hopes instilled in us as children. These hopes are false dreams of being cocooned and of belonging. — Nicola Field

The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction") — Francis M. Nevins Jr.

What's been building since the 1980's is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. That's what will last after this flurry on family values. — Stephanie Coontz

[On the socialites in New York in the Nineties who devoted themselves to politics, charities, and other volunteer work:] I never knew but one woman who devoted her life exclusively to the social game. She ended her days arranging dinner parties with paper dolls, a breakdown pitiful to watch. — Margaret Case Harriman

Being resolute today means to act within the framework of political and social pluralism and the rule of law to provide conditions for continued reform and prevent a breakdown of the state and economic collapse, prevent the elements of chaos from becoming catastrophic.
All this requires taking certain tactical steps, to search for various ways of addressing both short- and long-term tasks. Such efforts and political and economic steps, agreements based on reasonable compromise, are there for everyone to see. — Mikhail Gorbachev

We have evidence all around us in our daily analytic practice and in contemporary world history that this earth-shaking archetypal event is taking place here and now. It has already started. It is manifesting itself in international relations; in the breakdown of the social structures of Western civilization; in political, ethnic, and religious groupings; as well as within the psyches of individuals- the momentous event of the coming of the self into conscious realization. — Edward F Edinger

We listen to rap lyrics, but few study the history. One of the most significant contributions of hip hop. It offers a profound social commentary on the black experience. This is an aspect of the music that is overlooked because most people choose to pay more attention to "the hook" (the catchy repetitive phrase) than the complete body of work. In doing so, the listener misses the message: the essence of the music, the breakdown of the bars. That's tantamount to someone who is able to quote scripture, but has never read the bible. — Carlos Wallace

More and more, we have been able to present the argument that recruitment of child soldiers is a social breakdown that leads to atrocities, because that's why they get them. — Romeo Dallaire

Only through the struggle of the working class, the main revolutionary force in modern society, can a progressive solution be found to the crisis created by the breakdown of capitalism. The working class is revolutionary because 1) it is the principal productive force in society; 2) the historical and political logic of its resistance to capitalist exploitation and oppression leads to the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, the replacement of the profit motive with the satisfaction of social needs as the driving principle of economic life, and the realization of genuine social equality among all people; and 3) it is an international class whose victory will break down the barriers of national states and unite humanity in a truly global community devoted to the protection and development of its common home, the Earth. — Anonymous

The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary - culturally and biologically - for the optimal development of a human being."12 In a summary of the relevant science, University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox finds much the same: Let me now conclude our review of the social scientific literature on sex and parenting by spelling out what should be obvious to all. The best psychological, sociological, and biological research to date now suggests that - on average - men and women bring different gifts to the parenting enterprise, that children benefit from having parents with distinct parenting styles, and that family breakdown poses a serious threat to children and to the societies in which they live.13 — Sherif Girgis

Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order. — Christopher Lasch

How differently we behave in other peoples countries ... no sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn't require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight. — Aminatta Forna

There are many strengths in modern society, but one of its weaknesses is the breakdown of many of the old structures and networks that supported people in times of crisis and need. Whenever we lose a strengthening element in society, we need to replace it with alternative systems as quickly as possible. Befriending schemes are a crucial part of this process, because they fill the gap that social erosion has left in the lives of so many vulnerable people. — Richard Holloway

Our stable and eternal verities are being challenged. There's a kind of postmodern breakdown in journalism. The breadth of information sources and the speed of transmission are growing; but the traditional gravity of news has eroded. -Jin Yongquan — Judy Polumbaum

Many Nigerians believe that Babangida 'institutionalized corruption', yet few admit their own complicity in creating the situation where corruption became the norm. The citizenry are simultaneously victims, accomplices and active participants in their own corrupt downfall. Corruption in Nigeria is not just an offshoot of collapsed social and governmental institutions, nor is it the result of a hostile economic environment. The roots go much deeper and are more symptomatic of a residual breakdown of Nigerian societal values and morality. It is the result of a nationwide refusal to condemn dishonesty... While the government must take blame for not cracking down on corruption, the public deserves its share of blame for encouraging it, and letting the government get away with it. — Max Siollun

National and regional governments were committing vast resources into combating the biosphere breakdown. Social welfare, infrastructure administration, health care, and security - the fields government used to devote its efforts to - were all slowly being starved of tax money and sold off to private industry. It — Peter F. Hamilton

As in Northern Ireland, children, shoppers, ordinary working men were all suitable targets. Bombs in department stores and pubs would have even more impact in the context of the widely anticipated social breakdown brought on by industrial decline, high unemployment, rising inflation and an energy crisis. — Ian McEwan

By measuring the proportion of children living with the same parents from birth and whether their parents report a good quality relationship we are driving home the message that social programmes should promote family stability and avert breakdown. — Iain Duncan Smith