There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism.
China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can – and often is – censored by Chinese authorities.
The primary problem in many modernizing societies is not liberty but the creation of a legitimate public order. Men may, of course, have order without liberty, but they cannot have liberty without order.
I was 21 in 1968, so I’m as much a child of the ’60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared; the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968.
The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.
Societies are not sustainable without institutions.
Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.
When we talk about technology, often, we talk about the fact that it’s going to be cool; it’s going to do all these things for us. But at the same time, technology will deeply change our societies.
Building a solid foundation in the early years of a child’s life will not only help him or her reach their reach their full potential but will also result in better societies as a whole.
We believe. We believe in our destiny as a nation. We believe we have been called to do good, to spread the blessings of liberty and encourage the sense of trust upon which free societies depend.
What history taught me is that societies are not static and that the straight line of progressive ideals – this thinking we have that a society will just magically become more egalitarian over time – is patently false.
Cities tend to be representations of societies: diversity and inequality find their extremes in urban settings. Yet, when war is added onto pre-existing inequalities, high levels of poverty, or even disaster, urban fragility increases exponentially, making it harder to absorb the shocks of warfare.
Gender equality has a transformative effect that is essential to fully functioning communities, societies, and economies.
There’s a long record here of being wrong. There’s a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don’t have free and open societies.
If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well – better, in many ways, than devout ones.
We can never run away from our past. The past will catch up to us because it is us. It is a part of us; it’s what makes us we are. It’s what delineates the borders of our societies.
Class – or the economic status of individuals – is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth.
Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.
When societies go backwards and slide into authoritarianism, nationalism, and tribalism, machismo and sexism are also emboldened.
Any serious shift towards more sustainable societies has to include gender equality.
Marriage is a core institution of societies throughout the world and throughout history. It’s something that has provided permanence and stability for our very social structure.
There is very strong historical data that suggests the way societies grow is by making large, long-term investments.
Societies are being interconnected and we have to adjust to that fact.
Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.
The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full, but also when people’s basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies.
Multicultural societies are multi-conflict societies.
In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
Society may no longer define marriage in the only way marriage has ever been defined in the annals of recorded history. Many societies allowed polygamy, many allowed child marriages, some allowed marriage within families; but none, in thousands of years, defined marriage as the union of people of the same sex.
Western societies in general and universities in particular have not always been immune from institutional sexism. This is incontestable.
If intelligent robots are our competitors and, to some extent, cerebrally alike – enough for us to discuss their ethical standing – why would they be above the law? Should they not contribute to our societies, too? And why would they be exempt from taxes?
Societies need rules that make no sense for individuals. For example, it makes no difference whether a single car drives on the left or on the right. But it makes all the difference when there are many cars!
It serves notice that President Bush is serious about promoting freedom, because free societies are a lot more peaceable than dictatorships and monarchies.
I feel optimistic about how heterogeneous societies pull together. We just have to keep on with the struggle.
Whether you speak English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, everybody can speak wrestling and it’s really cool to go to different cultures and societies and see how the littlest things we do as performers influence the biggest things.
There were two drama societies in Enniskillen when I was growing up, St. Michaels and the Enniskillen Amateur Dramatic Society, and I had the pleasure of working with them both.
Effectively transcending and conquering the legacies of enchainment, impoverishment and racial denigration continue to elude us. Residual elements of the plantation-based past continue to shape our societies and determine their trajectories.
Demography is changing us as we are older societies, we’re living longer. How the generations balance each other out, how that affects education and health care.
It’s never been clearer that unrestrained market forces do not produce the kind of societies we aspire to – economically stable and socially inclusive, where citizens have access to secure jobs with the dignity of a fair wage and a welfare safety net.
Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They’ve never found a society that did not have it.
All democratic societies eventually decide what is in favor of them.
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God’s Will, united in spirit and in aim.
The Native American cultures on this continent, most of them, were matrilineal, and some women were the chiefs. Societies were about balance.
Homegrown terrorists are a real problem for even the most modern, democratic societies.
Gender equality is essential for ensuring that men and women can contribute fully at home, at work, and in public life for the betterment of societies and economies at large.
Over the ages, some societies have accorded far less value and respect to singles than to married individuals.
Human societies vary in lots of independent factors affecting their openness to innovation.
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.
As it defines itself, every society defines other societies. That definition almost always takes the form of a condemnation: the ‘other’ is the barbarian.
Ive lived and worked in developing countries so Im particularly interested in helping women in oppressive societies. Our problems can pale in comparison to theirs, the more we can do to empower them, the better off all women will be.
Although my family – parents and sister – all work in the personnel management business, their real passion is performing, amateur operatic societies and so on.
Transforming our societies and our economies is an agenda that requires the participation of all. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls are key. Including and empowering women and girls to develop and implement climate solutions is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing to do.
There are precedents for what happens when societies allow the divide between rich and poor to get so huge that it stops being funny and starts becoming a sick, blood-boiling joke. If you had a Tardis, you could go back to 1917 and ask the Russian royal family how it was all going.
There’s no such thing as an absolute openness. Openness is relative, I think, in all societies.
