It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.
I believe that social change has almost reached critical mass. So many people have undergone personal transformation that their effect on society is having a geometric - not arithmetic - impact. This coalescence of energies brings about meeting, networking, and a sophistication in communications that is unprecedented in history.
In Indiana, gays and lesbians can be fired from their jobs with impunity, and in Arkansas, it's the same thing. We need those protective laws to truly have an equal society.
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
I think it's certainly important that we don't have symbols in our society that are offensive to a segment and that arouse racial division.
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
With 'Arrested Development,' we tried showing the deep disdain that connects a family. We wanted to hold up a mirror to American society. And, just as predicted, America looked away.
Our horizon is the creation of a noble society to which, like the medieval builder of those glorious cathedrals, you will have added your conception, your artful piece of stone.
There is a sort of genre of optimistic science fiction that I like, and I don't think there is enough of. One of my favourites is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, 'The City and the Stars.' It's set in this far future on Earth in this somewhat static society and trying to break out.
A widely held, but rarely articulated, belief in our society is that the ideal self is bold, alpha, gregarious. Introversion is viewed somewhere between disappointment and pathology.
By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation: those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan... In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential.
Our nation's founding fathers carefully crafted a Bill of Rights - an articulation of personal liberties woven into the entire fabric of our free society. When any of those freedoms are threatened anywhere, they must be defended and protected everywhere.
The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.
I've always believed that the artiste is the one who has his pulse on the society and who, in many ways, represents the conscience of society in terms of engaging standards that we need to live by.
At the end of the day, makeup comes off whether you're a man or a woman; why discriminate against men, when makeup is such an amazing form of artistic expression, just because society says it's not 'normal?'
The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself.
A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.
This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further.
I've gotten scholarships from the Asian-American Directors Guild of America society and things like that, and those things helped me, even if I didn't realize how much.
Those who challenge the law in one or another of its aspects weaken the whole legal structure of society. For one man to disobey a law he does not like is to invite others to disobey another law which he may regard as indispensable to his own livelihood - or life.
