Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.
Terror will crash down on us if we fail to understand that a pluralistic society requires the personal and daily commitment of every citizen.
A secure pluralistic society requires communities that are educated and confident both in the identity and depth of their own traditions and in those of their neighbours.
The emphasis on the birth of Christ tends to polarize our pluralistic society and create legal and ethnic belligerence.
It says something very deep about humans and our society, something very good about us, that we've invested our time and treasure in building a machine that can fly across three billion miles of space to explore the Pluto system.
Eggs is a kind of a plucky, brave 11-year-old boy who thinks he is a boxtroll. And he's kind of one of these mythological feral children who are raised in isolation of humanity and, by virtue of that, have a deeper connection to humanity because they've been raised away from the poisons of society.
I belong to the generation of workers who, born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland, had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry, becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society.
In every society, manufacturing builds the lower middle class. If you give up manufacturing, you end up with haves and have-nots, and you get social polarization. The whole lower middle class sinks.
It bothers me when I look at Israeli society, on the divisiveness in it, and to polarization. I'm not just talking about left-right... but how individuals behave towards each other.
While many people overseas envy Korea's development, it is true that society has many problems such as economic polarization and a low birthrate.
A thing that really troubles me about a more polarized society is that you stop having a sense of society and citizenship.
My message is, if someone beats you, act like you don't have hands. If someone slurs you, act like you don't have a tongue. Society is already polarized enough, don't make it worse.
If a bully wants to beat you up, you have the choice of running away or standing your ground. In our society, we have police forces who try to control bullies, sometimes by force.
Blacks commit murder eight times more per capita than any other group in our society. If I had put all of my police officers on Park Avenue and none in Harlem, thousands and thousands more blacks would've been killed during the eight years that I was mayor.
You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.
Unless we abandon elements which resemble a police state, we can't meet the demands of being a modern society.
U.S. society doesn't want to play the role of international policeman.
Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
Socrates was famously executed for his philosophical and political beliefs. I wondered what would happen if you had a similar character, who was so relentlessly questioning of everything? In a modern society, would we be any more or any less tolerant of that kind of character?
Art should not be a tool of politics, but sometimes art can help make the political climate more open and help society become more free.
