For nations and societies, the ‘good’ or benefit of technology is often expressed in economic terms, in measures such as workplace productivity and business growth.
Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.
Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental.
Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
Already we’re seeing graduates of U.S. higher education going back to their home countries and contributing to societies there, where in the past they would have stayed in the U.S. and built new companies here. We have to have immigration reform that allows talented foreigners to become Americans.
I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women’s roles are growing in power all of the time.
The serious questions that are talked out or strangled with red tape are more numerous than those that are killed by silence; the number of people whose ideas are knocked on the head in societies is greater in our day than that of the solitary fighters who go under.
Everybody feels like an outcast because the world is so large and every fingerprint is so vastly different from one another, and yet we have these standards and beliefs, and dogmatic systems of judgment and ranking, in almost all the societies of the world.
Basic science provides long-term benefits for ourselves and our fragile planet and should be supported by all the world’s societies.
Facebook has become the richest and most powerful publisher in history by replacing editors with algorithms – shattering the public square into millions of personalised news feeds, shifting entire societies away from the open terrain of genuine debate and argument while they make billions from our valued attention.
The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.
Who I am really doesn’t matter at all. If I’m the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues. What really matters here is the kind of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies.
In authoritarian societies, cultural institutions tend to become ideological proxies – think of the National Ballet in Cuba or the East German gymnastics team.
The value of solar and wind decline in economic value as they become larger shares of the electricity grid for physical reasons. They produce too much energy when societies don’t need it and not enough energy when they do.
Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.
It is also, I would guess, a universal that in all societies people value respectability granted to them.
Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.
The Anthroposophical Society is different from other societies in that it will not tolerate any figments of the imagination in its organization but is constructed on the basis of reality.
Are artists the canaries in the mine, warning of the coming explosion before anyone else? It’s hard to look at the world before 1914 and not wonder if they somehow felt a catastrophe was bearing down on them and their societies.
If you look at the primitive societies that we know about, the worst thing that could have happened to you was to be captured and be turned over to the women.
Our societies have achieved a general level of prosperity of which most of all the human beings who have ever lived could only dream. Now we need to show that we can stop continually wanting more – more money, more stuff. We must show that it is possible for people to realise that they have enough.
Migration powers economic growth, reduces inequalities, and connects diverse societies. Yet it is also a source of political tensions and human tragedies.
We need to tackle extreme inequality because it is morally indefensible and socially corrosive – undermining our health, affecting our well-being, and undermining peaceful societies.
Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies.
Tech innovation is something societies have to pursue as vigorously as they can. We have to innovate civically and socially at the same rate; otherwise, you create unfortunate disruptions, and that’s where you have people opposing technological innovations.
Societies that empower women are less violent in every way.
Punitive murder by the police and by vigilantes has existed in all societies at some point, and probably still exists in most.
Freedom of the press underpins free societies around the world.
I belong to quite a lot of learned societies. We collect firearms and discuss them at dinners and clubs and things.
Throughout history, when societies have been faced with big challenges, they’ve put their best people on them. During the Space Race, American and Russian scientists, engineers, astronauts and cosmonauts pushed the bounds of what was possible and landed men on the moon.
Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We’re looking at six or seven problems constantly. We’re living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.
Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can already imagine the problem all democratic societies will face in future elections: how to limit lies when they threaten democracy?
Well we are hoping that the power of the community of free nations is such that our sovereignty our rights are not going to be challenged by anybody who’s going try to undermine the freedom, the openness of our societies and our security.
Duplicity in matters of religion is not confined to Pakistan, but it hurts the most in societies where debate on religion is asphyxiated and preachers of hate have become keepers of faith.
They’re such hierarchical things, film sets, they’re sort of mini societies. Often they’re incredibly political places.
You have to believe that it’s through politics that societies can lead social and economic and political change.
The term ‘cyberutopian’ tends to be used only in the context of critique. Calling someone a cyberutopian implies that he or she has an unrealistic and naively overinflated sense of what technology makes possible and an insufficient understanding of the forces that govern societies.
Our duty as journalists is to use our clarity – and our imagination – to build hope in the societies in which we work. Our duty is to keep holding power to account, and to fight for press freedom around the world.
Baboons take a bit of getting to know but, apparently, once you break the ice, so to speak, they are complex and interesting creatures with elaborate societies.
Radical multicultural types will, in the end, destroy the things they claim to like, because they don’t understand that liberty and reasonable equality are features of stable, free, conservative societies based on Christian ideas, which guard their borders and are proud of their civilisation.
Pakistan is heir to an intellectual tradition of which the illustrious exponent was the poet and philosopher Mohammad Iqbal. He saw the future course for Islamic societies in a synthesis between adherence to the faith and adjustment to the modern age.
Based on a lifetime of observations and a few decades in the markets, I understand that societies, beliefs and fashions all move in long arcs of time. We call these arcs several things: cycles, periods, eras.
I’m a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.
I think our societies – to certain extent, of course, and to different degrees, but almost with no exception – have always been struggling to come to terms with archaic traditions.
I’ve benefited from the best of both societies and both cultures, East and West.
I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall. That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet.
A culture of love and kinship has knitted Mississippi families together, and tied them to each other, for ages. It is what makes us special in a fast-paced and transient world. I will defend that culture against the erosion that frays societies.
