An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation.

—Mary McCarthy

justice society

More quotations from Mary McCarthy

The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to become a Writer.

—Mary McCarthy

writing misfortune

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

—Mary McCarthy

heroism anticipation suspense

How many women, she wondered, had poisoned their husbands, not for gain or for another man, but out of sheer inability to leave them. The extreme solution is always the simplest. The weed killer is in the soup; the man is in his coffin. . . . Murder is more civilized than divorce; the Victorians, as usual, were wiser.

—Mary McCarthy

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.

—Mary McCarthy

action knowledge morality regret bad good

More quotations tagged with “society”

Once, perhaps, the God-intoxicated few could abscond to the wild frontiers, the forests, the desert places to keep alive the perennial wisdom that they harbored. But no longer. They must now become a political force or their tradition perishes. Soon enough, there will be no solitude left for the saints to roam but its air will shudder with a noise of great engines that drowns out all prayers.

—Theodore Roszak

solitude politics God wisdom society prayer frontier

Conservatives have historically seen people falling through the cracks in society and said, That's the way things work, survival of the fittest. Liberals see people falling through the cracks and say, We've got to do something about those people falling through the cracks, so we need a strong government that can provide programs and assist those people. Populists say there shouldn't be any cracks; let's fix them.

—Jim Hightower

politics society government conservative liberal populism

All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysands to foist their problems onto the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defense. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.

—Germaine Greer

society money problems mother motherhood psychoanalysis

Being considered or labeled mentally disordered — abnormal, crazy, mad, psychotic, sick, it matters not what variant is used — is the most profoundly discrediting classification that can be imposed on a person today. Mental illness casts the "patient" out of our social order just as surely as heresy cast the "witch" out of medieval society. That, indeed, is the very purpose of stigma terms.

—Thomas Szasz

society stigma illness mental illness

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

—James Madison

politics society angels