Quotes & Sayings About Social Commentary

It was the age of confidence. Arrogance was epidemic. — David Laskin

There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. — William Gibson

I think it is just a matter of getting into the mind of the writer," Vetinari went on, looking at a letter covered with grubby fingerprints and what looked like the remains of someone's breakfast. He added: "In some cases, I imagine, there is a lot of room. — Terry Pratchett

In practice nobody cares if work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except " Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. — George Orwell

As music becomes less of a thing
a cylinder, a cassette, a disc
and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again. — David Byrne

But I had no idea who this person might be, or who any of the people might be who sat at that table and watched me at the door and claimed to have feelings not exactly for me, but at me. — Alexandra Kleeman

A hero would die for his country, but he'd much rather live for it. — Aaron Sorkin

I don't want to offend people and I don't want to be mean, but social commentary and comedy for me are part and parcel. I think the greatest social activists are comedians. — Alanis Morissette

I know positively - yes Rieux I can say I know the world inside out as no one on earth is free from it. And I know too that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest- health integrity purity if you like - is a product of the human will of vigilance that must never falter. The good man the man who infects hardly anyone is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power a never ending tension of the mind to avoid such lapses. Yes Rieux it's a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it's still more wearying to refuse to be it. That's why everybody in the world today looks so tired everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us who want to get the plague out of their systems feel such desperate weariness a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death. — Albert Camus

The kind of self-righteous intolerance once associated with the more puritanical forms of religion and the more extreme forms of Socialism now reappeared to promote the 'rights' of women, homosexuals, racial minorities, the disabled and any group of people who could be portrayed as being 'below the line' and therefore discriminated against...Unconsciously they were using the belief that they were acting in the name of selfless moral principle simply as a cloak for asserting their ego, and as a means to enjoy feelings of moral superiority. In the cause of 'toleration' and promoting collective 'rights,' they had become possessed by a fanatical and humorless intolerance. — Christopher Booker

This is America. We don't have adult discussions. We have Twitter. — Bill Maher

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

Only a bitter little adolescent boy could confuse realism with pessimism. — Grant Morrison

As a writer, it is my job to tell a story. I don't want to get involved in social commentary; I just want to show issues from a different point of view. I want to show issues from a perspective that may not be highlighted. — Nicola Monaghan

Dickens writes such brilliant characters and stories, and his themes and social commentary are still so relevant. I think that's why he's still so loved today. — Douglas Booth

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. — Charlie Brooker

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

The Jury had each formed a different view
Long before the indictment was read
And they all spoke at once so that none of them knew
One word that the other had said — Lewis Carroll

I'm incapable of writing without social commentary. I like to think that it's integrated and not really heavy handedly didactic. — John Shirley

Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what you want, I think English rural communities offer quite a lot of material. — Rachel Cusk

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. — James Baldwin

He remembers noticing his dad's shadow was shorter than the others, and he had a visceral sense his father was weaker than the rest, and that he was more dangerous as a weak person with a lot of power than a powerful person with a lot of power. — Jardine Libaire

It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun. — Trevanian

If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading. — Jodi Picoult

Binkie, the one and only. He can hear her rings clacking on the plastic phone, and he chuckles, envisioning with amusement the bejeweled and suntanned manicured grip his grandmother thinks she has on his balls. And she does. — Jardine Libaire

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

I'm interested in social commentary. — Kathryn Bigelow

The past is dangerous, not least because it cannot go away. It is simply there, never to change, and in its constancy it reflects the eternity of God. It presents to the young mind a vast field of fascination, of war and peace, loyalty and treason, invention and folly, bitter twists of fate and sweet poetic justice. When that past is the past of one's people or country or church, then the danger is terrible indeed, because then the past makes claims upon our honor and allegiance. Then it knocks at the door, saying softly, "I am still here." And then our plans for social control - for inducing the kind of amnesia that has people always hankering after what is supposed to be new, without asking inconvenient questions about where the desirable thing has come from and where it will take us - must fail. For a man with a past may be free; but a man without a past, never. — Anthony Esolen

To me, the best zombie movies aren't the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics. Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society ... and our society's station in the world. They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too ... but there's always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness. — Robert Kirkman

I try to tell the best story, and the story that has some heart and some genuine terror and some social commentary and some comedy and some romance and some sex and some violence. — Alan Ball

We will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess. — Elbert Hubbard

He happy hum of humanity. — Arthur C. Clarke

I have little tolerance for noise and stupidity. — Andrew J. Robinson

To every Old World belief, habit, or tradition, there was and still is a technological alternative. To prayer, the alternative is penicillin; to family roots, the alternative is mobility; to reading, the alternative is television; to restraint, the alternative is immediate gratification; to sin, the alternative is psychotherapy; to political ideology, the alternative is popular appeal established through scientific polling. There is even an alternative to the painful riddle of death, as Freud called it. The riddle may be postponed through longer life, and then perhaps solved altogether by cryogenics. — Neil Postman

Welcome to Hell. Here's your accordion. — Gary Larson

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on I am not too sure. — H.L. Mencken

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

Everyone in life has a purpose, even if it's to serve as a bad example — Carroll Bryant

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. — Eric Hansen

Our modern history begins in 1788 with the dumping of the human detritus of Britain ... Yet repositioned in the sunlight , they flourished. ...This was colonial Australia's great gift to the world: practical proof that, when it comes to human society, the soil is more important than the seed. — Richard Glover

Being in prison for seven years was like being in an army that never drilled, never deployed, and only fought itself. — Raegan Butcher

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. — Matt Haig

Progress in social psychology is necessary to counteract the dangers which arise from the progress in physics and medicine. — Erich Fromm

Riding in a carriage without an escort is modern. But traveling out and about unescorted is unheard of. — Jordan Stratford

Krista asks,"What is it about society that disappoints you so much?"

Elliot thinks, "Oh I don't know, is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children?

Or maybe it's that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit; the world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy.

Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money.
I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards.

Fuck Society."

"Mr. Robot" season 1 episode 1, 'ohellofriend.mov — Sam Esmail

Jill had three basic statements about life,
1. It is your life, usually with some added social commentary.
2. What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things.
3. No one ever said that life was fair. — Nicholas Sparks

People only need the right amount of bullshit for things to start exploding. Sad, but it's human nature. — Gabbo De La Parra

I felt I had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of great soul musicians of the past, who made a lot of social and political commentary through their music. — Aloe Blacc

Because the great beauty of embryo development, the bit that human beings find so hard to grasp, is that it is a totally decentralised process ... no cell need wait for instructions from authority; every cell can act on its own information and the signals it receives from its neighbours. We do not organise societies that way ... Perhaps we should try. — Matt Ridley

We're living in a funny world kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard. — Jim Thompson

A public outcry usually masks a private obsession. — Eric Schlosser

..the happy hum of humanity. — Arthur C. Clarke

All those happy, pretty, successful people- he hated them because he knew they didn't really exist, and he hated even more the magazine that glorified them and in a way that made them exist, actors, rock musicians, famous writers, politicians. Those aren't people, he fumed, they're photographs. — Russell Banks

The problem is just too big to solve. This life is much easier if we all just pretend to have a heart. — E.P. Shelky

Last summer, in London at least, the hoodie was transformed from a benign piece of leisurewear into a uniform for the disaffected, the angry, the malevolent. So much so that 'hoodie' was no longer a piece of clothing. It was a whole person. A hoodie was somebody likely to steal, plunder and do you unimaginable harm.

People were crossing the street when a hoodie crossed their path - even if it was a 70-year-old gentleman walking his dog. That's how quickly the fear had permeated the collective consciousness. And lifting the hood was tantamount to cocking a gun. — Mark Capell

If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers and has been presented to her Sovereign at Court. From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the dieting hysteria and applauded the "real" women's body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible mold. — Jo Nesbo

Like us, those vanished warriors planted their standards in the sands of their own self-summoned extinction. — Steven Pressfield

'Dating Game' wasn't social commentary, political analysis, Shakespearean-level drama or even blunt-force comedy. It was just the televised equivalent of meeting someone at a bar. But it appealed to our most basic Darwinian instinct: selecting a good mate. You can't go wrong when a show's premise is hard-wired into human DNA. — Seth Shostak

Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. — Margaret Atwood

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

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

Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of live. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus — Emma Cline

Just because all the rats are gone doesn't mean I trust the rattlesnake that got rid of them. — John Steiner

Goodreads sports some of the social awkwardness of middle school. If you are looking for a friend, I promise no matter your background or book preferences I will be your friend. — Red Phoenix

She was all slump and sag her spirit withering like a tuckering weed shambling for a way out — Saira Viola

Reality Tv had become the preferred drug of choice for the George Clooney obsessed housewives strung out on empty promises and splintered dreams — Saira Viola

I'm the rap version of Dave Chappelle. I'm not sayin' I'm nearly as talented as Chappelle when it comes to political and social commentary, but like him, I'm laughing to keep from crying. — Kanye West

One good thing about being an immigrant in the US, no one cares about my sociopolitical opinion. I exist like a bland wallpaper to all races. — Fidelis O. Mkparu

Nick sat alone reading a copy of The Independent . Cocaine socialists were trying their hardest to juice up Britain's economy with super casinos — Saira Viola

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. — Carroll Bryant

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived ... (Bk2:3) — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die! — John Cage

When we forget our essential similarities, we forget how to get along, and that cannot but lead to prejudice, discrimination, and eventually, conflict. — G. Norman Lippert

Summary of the Torah, whilst standing on one leg: What is offensive when done to you, do not do it to your neighbor. The rest is commentary, now go and study (it). — Hillel The Elder- First-century Jewish Scholar

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

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs. — Joni Mitchell

If you won't admit there are kooks among those who share your political viewpoint, chances are, you're one of the kooks. — Raul Ramos Y Sanchez

The world's evaluations of an individual's social worth, like the slits in my eyeballs, change with time and circumstance. In point of fact my pupil-slits vary but modestly between broad and narrow, but mankind's judgements turn somersaults and cartwheels for no conceivable reason. — Soseki Natsume

Poverty . . . is a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilisation," the Scottish merchant and statistician Patrick Colquhoun, turned London magistrate, said in 1806, ironically in an argument for raising people from destitution and misery to mere poverty. "It is the lot of man - it is the source of wealth, since without poverty there would be no labour, and without labour there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth."113 And weren't the poor resentful that they could not eat rich meats, sauces, and sweets and dubious about the rule that each rank in society needed a distinct diet? — Rachel Laudan

All these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust — Nathanael West

Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death. — Neil Postman

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion? ... There is nobody - here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone. — Virginia Woolf

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

When it's better for everyone, it's better for everyone. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream. — Iris Murdoch

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. — Irvine Welsh

Dickens's final book, 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' forms the jumping-off point for my new novel, 'The Last Dickens'. This last work by Dickens has very little social commentary and a pretty tightly efficient storyline and cast of characters. Not necessarily what we think of when we think what characterizes Dickens. — Matthew Pearl

Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction". Source: Wikipedia — H.G.Wells

I love social media. I love the connectivity it provides, the creativity it allows, and the breathtaking wealth of information we all have at our fingertips because of it. — Galit Breen

The idea that the millionaire finds nothing but a sad, empty place at the top of this society; the idea that the rich do not know what to do with their
money; the idea that the successful become filled up with futility, and that
those born successful are poor and little as well as rich - the idea, in short,
of the disconsolateness of the rich - is, in the main, merely a way by which
those who are not rich reconcile themselves to the fact. Wealth in America is
directly gratifying and directly leads to many further gratifications. To be
truly rich is to possess the means of realizing in big ways one's little whims
and fantasies and sicknesses ... — C. Wright Mills

One problem with the division of labor in our complex economy is how it obscures the lines of connection, and therefore of responsibility, between our everyday acts and their real-world consequences. Specialization makes it easy to forget about the filth of the coal-fired power plant that is lighting this pristine computer screen, or the back-breaking labor it took to pick the strawberries for my cereal, or the misery of the hog that lived and died so I could enjoy my bacon. Specialization neatly hides our implication in all that is done on our behalf by unknown other specialists half a world away. — Michael Pollan

Did you notice there aren't any average kids anymore - only Gifted and Disposable? — Heather Choate Davis

The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. — Larry Niven

She was handed more personality than other mortals, and chemically fertilized in a glasshouse - now her bionic strength allows her to teleport platters of watercress sandwiches from the kitchen to the library, where she's beating her friends at backgammon. — Jardine Libaire

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. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Immature citizens in several sizes were massed before a large factorylike structure where advanced techniques transformed them into true-thinking right-acting members of the three social classes, lower, middle, and upper middle. — Donald Barthelme

I simply refuse to deal with idiots ... It has cut my social obligations in half. — Julia Quinn

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

There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. — Edith Wharton