Quotes by Social Critics - Page 6

Calling resists privatization by insisting on the totality of faith. Calling resists politicization by demanding a tension with every human allegiance and association. Calling resists polarization by requiring an attitude toward, and action in, society that is inevitably transforming because it is constantly engaged. Grand Christian movements will rise and fall. Grand campaigns will be mounted and grand coalitions assembled. But all together such coordinated efforts will never match the influence of untold numbers of followers of Christ living out their callings faithfully across the vastness and complexity of modern society.
Os Guinness
At its root, the logic is that of the Grand Inquisitor, who bitterly assailed Christ for offering people freedom and thus condemning them to misery. The Church must correct the evil work of Christ by offering the miserable mass of humanity the gift they most desire and need: absolute submission. It must “vanquish freedom” so as “to make men happy” and provide the total “community of worship” that they avidly seek. In the modern secular age, this means worship of the state religion, which in the Western democracies incorporates the doctrine of submission to the masters of the system of public subsidy, private profit, called free enterprise. The people must be kept in ignorance, reduced to jingoist incantations, for their own good. And like the Grand Inquisitor, who employs the forces of miracle, mystery, and authority “to conquer and hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness” and to deny them the freedom of choice they so fear and despise, so the “cool observers” must create the “necessary illusions” and “emotionally potent oversimplifications” that keep the ignorant and stupid masses disciplined and content.
Noam Chomsky
Most parents are not really ‘supportive’ because they want their kid(s) to succeed; they ‘support’ their kid(s) as an attempt to avoid appearing to have bred a failure, or, failures … in the eyes of their peers and/or neighbours.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Beliefs are conclusions reached by men who are lazy to think for themselves.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most priests wish they were as righteous as they seem to most members of their congregations.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It's all about money, not freedom. You think you're free? Try going somewhere without money.
Bill Hicks
In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.
Albert Jay Nock
12% of people marry because they are completely in love. 88% of people marry just so they are then liable for only half of their rent.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There is a correlation between the number of days since a man last had sex, and, the number of women that he is convinced he is in love with, or, the number of things that he is willing to do for a woman.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A prisoner is imprisoned by the crime that he has committed. A jailer is imprisoned — in the very same prison — by the employment contract that he has signed.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Millions of business people are each constantly forced to choose between their desire to not be a bad person and their desire to be a good business person, that is to say, to make as much money as they possibly can by maximizing their revenue while minimizing the cost of producing whatever it is that they sell.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Even those who want to go to heaven would rather kill than be killed.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
People who talk too much are tiresome, especially those who are not informative, thought-provoking, or funny.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Boredom is probably more frequent and more tormenting if you do not have sight or hands.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The most upsetting thing about Society’s attitude towards disabled people is that many millions of disabled people became disabled while trying to please Society, the very same bitch that secretly regards them as subhuman.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
In some cases, people with a body (whose size) they did not long for are victims of having a bank balance (whose size) they longed for.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The second orgasm has a biblical connotation.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.
Noam Chomsky
You cannot really shame a man who sincerely does not care what others think of him.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It is a sign of arrogance to be mad at someone for not acting as per your advice, especially if it was unsolicited.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
He who frowns when they say that he sucks shouldn’t smile when they say that he rocks.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!
Cornel West
Money cannot buy you love. But it sure can buy you things that some people will love you for having.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There is a correlation between the number of days since a man last had sex, and, the number of things that he is willing to do for a woman.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.
Camille Paglia
When it comes to things such as sugar and rice, most people believe that brown is superior to white. But when it comes to human beings, they believe that the opposite is true.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Clothes are a homeless man’s home.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
AIDS would have claimed fewer lives if we had publicly recommended what I wish to call ‘The Presumption of Sickness,’ i.e., the principle that whomever we are about to sleep with is HIV-positive until proven HIV-negative.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
For breakfast to be called ‘in bed’ instead of ‘on top of a bed,’ the house in which it is about to be eaten has to have at least two rooms (excluding the kitchen); (at least) three, if it has a bathroom.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most people do not mind having a house that is smaller and/or a car that is cheaper than their neighbours’, as long as they each earn and have more money than their neighbours, and, equally important, their neighbours know that.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If you're independent-minded in school, you're probably going to get in trouble very early on. That's not the trait that's being preferred or cultivated.
Noam Chomsky
Life’s most rewarding forms of being: Being patient, and, being yourself.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Life humbles the rich by giving them problems that money can’t resolve, or, dissolve. Life enslaves the poor by giving them problems that money can resolve, or, dissolve.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I think maybe the classic formulation was by David Hume in "Of the First Principles of Government," where he pointed out that "Force is always on the side of the governed." Whether it's a military society, a partially free society, or what we - not he - would call a totalitarian state, it's the governed who have the power. And the rulers have to find ways to keep them from using their power. Force has its limits, so they have to use persuasion. They have to somehow find ways to convince people to accept authority. If they aren't able to do that, the whole thing is going to collapse.
Noam Chomsky
88% of women love making their first love making incident with a man seem like an accident.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The black conservatives claim that the decline of values such as patience, deferred gratification, and self-reliance have resulted in the high crime rates, the increasing number of unwed mothers, and the relatively uncompetitive academic performances of black youth. And certainly these sad realities must be candidly confronted. But nowhere in their writings do the new black conservatives examine the pervasiveness of sexual and military images used by the mass media and deployed by the advertising industry in order to entice and titillate consumers. Black conservatives thus overlook the degree to which market forces of advanced capitalist processes thrive on sexual and military images.
Cornel West
I'm tired of this back-slappin' "isn't humanity neat" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes.
Bill Hicks
Sustainability is best illustrated by those who sell food … just so they afford something to eat.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Noam Chomsky
Intellect is the virtue of ignoring one’s emotions’ attempt to contaminate one’s opinions.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Morals are nothing but a civilized society’s attempt to tame some beast called man.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Thou shalt not unfollow someone, merely because they stopped following you.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just because they hate us.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Being rich or famous is the only profound thing that some people have ever said.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Some men’s chests are more buttlike than some women’s butts.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most people do not want much. All they want is to be envied by most people.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The fear of failure is a liability.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Listen, the next revolution is gonna be a revolution of ideas.
Bill Hicks
Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs that may be severe, even in a society that lacks such means of control as deathsquads, psychiatric prisons, or extermination camps. The very structure of the media is designed to induce conformity to established doctrine. In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.
Noam Chomsky
Some women are good-looking … until they change their hairstyle.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most people would rather eat inside a windowless room in which they have just defecated than eat inside one in which someone else has just farted, even if the room does not have a toilet.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Some people are each envious of the person they used to be.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Ownership breeds slavery: with every single thing that you acquire, comes a new worry of not losing that thing.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most self-employed people remain slaves to the employed’s working hours.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If a man has important work and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.
R.H. Tawney
Hanging around people you’re smarter than is good for your ego. Hanging around people who are smarter than you is good for your intellect.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The difference between a retiring man and a used condom is that the condom isn’t given a golden watch to inspire the illusion that it still matters to whomever that has just used it.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ - is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom.
Cornel West