Social Conditions Quotes

• As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot.

  Tracy Chapman

  Mother, Children, Thinking

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• I'm much more interested in developing human character in society. And I'm much more interested in the social conditions that foster commitment to ideals, a sense of solidarity, purposefulness, steadfastness, responsibility.

  Murray Bookchin

  Commitment, Responsibility, Character

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• We destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

  Walter Ciszek

  Education, Mean, Home

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• Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power.

  Uta Hagen

  Women, Moving, Taken

  Uta Hagen (1991). “Challenge For The Actor”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• Without country you have neither name, token, voice, nor rights, no admission as brothers into the fellowship of the Peoples. You are the bastards of Humanity. Soldiers without a banner, Israelites among the nations, you will find neither faith nor protection; none will be sureties for you. Do not beguile yourselves with the hope of emancipation from unjust social conditions if you do not first conquer a Country for yourselves.

  Giuseppe Mazzini

  Country, Brother, Rights

  Giuseppe Mazzini (2005). “The Duties of Man and Other Essays”, p.53, Cosimo, Inc.

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• However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Individuality, Talent, Social

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• In the midst of a culture that is rationally organized for a vocational workaday life, there is hardly any room for the cultivation of acosmic brotherliness, unless it is among strata who are economically carefree. Under the technical and social conditions of rational culture, an imitation of the life of Buddha, Jesus, or Francis seems condemned to failure for purely external reasons.

  Max Weber

  Jesus, Culture, Rooms

  Max Weber, Hans Gerth (1991). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.357, Psychology Press

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• I’m a believer in luck and think the social conditions you’re born into provide the opportunity for you to prove your luck. And I suppose I’ve been lucky.

  Sigmar Polke

  Opportunity, Thinking, Luck

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• Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration.

  James Connolly

  Inspiration, People, Literature

  James Connolly (1971). “Labour in Irish History”, p.20, Lulu.com

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• A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all.

  Allen Tate

  Two, Quality, Three

  allen tate (1953). “the man of letters in the modern world”

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• Now culture being a social product, I firmly believe that any work of art should have a social function to beautify, to glorify, to dignify man... Since any social system is forced to change to another by concrete economic forces, its art changes also to be recharged, reshaped, and revitalized by the new conditions... The making of a genuine artist or writer is not mysterious. It is not
  the work of Divine Providence. Social conditions, history, and the people's struggle are the factors behind it.

  Carlos Bulosan

  Art, Believe, Struggle

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• The American teacher stands on the front lines of poverty and inequity that our fellow Americans refuse to acknowledge, on the front lines of the real social condition of our nation–not the advertised one–and we stand together. When we look over our shoulders, there’s no one there backing us up. The rest of the army is off pretending there is no fight to be had here, no excuses to be made, no hardships to decry, no supply lines to worry about, that things in American society are just hunky-dory outside of the fact that the teachers just don’t care enough

  John Kuhn

  Teacher, Real, Fighting

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• Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Hero, Mean, Numbers

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• The wisest is he that knows only that he knows nothing. God only knows. We mortals are only troubled with morbid little ideas, sired by circumstance and damned by folly. The human head can absorb only the flavorings of its surroundings. We assume that our faith political and our creed religious are founded upon our reason, when they are really made for us by social conditions over which we had little control.

  William Cowper Brann

  Religious, Ideas, Political

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• No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Depression, Death, Pain

  "A Reply to Kenneth Tynan: The Playwright's Role". The Observer, June 29, 1958.

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• Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

  Walter Lippmann

  Change, Mean, Social

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

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• Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.

  Salman Rushdie

  World Religions, Historical, Islam

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• Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Social, Force

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• . . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.

  Erich Fromm

  Love Life, Men, Venture

  Erich Fromm (1963). “War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry Into the Roots of Destructiveness”

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• If you open up the mind, the opportunity to address both profits and social conditions are limitless. It's a process of innovation.

  Jerry Greenfield

  Opportunity, Innovation, Mind

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• A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions....A ny religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Men, Dust, Soul

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• Ben and I built Ben & Jerry’s on the idea that business has a responsibility to the community and environment If you open up the mind, the opportunity to address both profits and social conditions are limitless. It’s a process of innovation If we were going to have a business we were going to have one that was consistent with our values We measured our success not just by how much money we made, but by how much we contributed to the community. It was a two-part bottom line.

  Jerry Greenfield

  Responsibility, Opportunity, Ideas

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• The drama of AIDS threatens not just some nations or societies, but the whole of humanity. It knows no frontiers of geography, race, age or social condition(calling) for a supreme effort of international cooperation on the part of government, the world medical and scientific community and all those who exercise influence in developing a sense of more responsibility in society.

  Pope John Paul II

  Drama, Responsibility, Exercise

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• For many Washington liberals, terrorism was not the instrument of political fanatics and evil men, but was the product of social conditions - poverty, racism and oppression - for which the Western democracies, including Israel were always ultimately to blame.

  David Horowitz

  Men, Israel, Racism

  David Horowitz (2002). “How to beat the Democrats, and other subversive ideas”, Spence Pub

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• War was forced upon mankind in his original civil and social condition.

  Elihu Root

  War, Social, Mankind

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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