Societal Norms Quotes

“One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.”
― Robert Musil

“It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those people who share their views of life and their own place in it. This surprises us, where the persons concerned are thieves, bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes vaunting their depravity, or murderers boasting of their cruelty. This surprises us only because the circle, the atmosphere in which these people live, is limited, and we are outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon which the rich boast of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride themselves on their victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views of life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is more extensive, and we ourselves are moving inside of it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“I am not trapped in the wrong body; I am trapped in a world that makes very little space for bodies like mine.”
― Ivan E. Coyote, Tomboy Survival Guide

“I think scientists have a valid point when they bemoan the fact that it's socially acceptable in our culture to be utterly ignorant of math, whereas it is a shameful thing to be illiterate.”
― Jennifer Ouellette, The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

“Sometimes you need a reminder that negative comments about your body aren’t even really about your body, they’re about society and our society’s wrongheaded and impossibly narrow definition of a “good” body. Your body didn’t do anything wrong. What’s fucked up about your body is not your body at all, but that your body has to live in a society that thinks it has a right to say fucked up things about your body.”
― Golda Poretsky

“We hated the gym. We loved it. We escaped to it. We avoided it. We had complicated relationships with our bodies, while at the same time insisting that we loved them unconditionally. We were sure we had better, more important things to do than worry about them, but the slender yoga bodies of moms in Lululemon at school pickup taunted us. Their figures hinted at wheatgrass shots, tennis clubs, and vagina steaming treatments. We found them aspirational.
So we sweated on the elliptical and lifted ten-pound weights, inching closer to the bodies we told ourselves we were too evolved to want.”
― Chandler Baker, Whisper Network

“It’s an interesting idea, but I would challenge you to decide: Do you hate girls? Or do you hate the expectations put on girls by society?”
― Liz Prince, Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir

“Centuries of social conditioning has created a generational fear among women of being perceived as masculine.This is where all the shaming and labels come into play, which perpetuate the oppression of girls and women. As a society we shame girls with deep voices or masculine features and we shame boys with soft voices or effeminate gestures. Girls get called "too manly" and boys get called "too girly". The only solution I can think of is to be unashamedly "you". If that means challenging stereotypes and gender norms, go right ahead!”
― Miya Yamanouchi, Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women

“Among societies with only two sexes, they often chose to pass as a man or a woman, and became expert at it.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“What doesn’t polite society, in all seriousness, want to discuss? Sex, money, political corruption, bodily functions, religion, loss and despair?

These have been the very subjects attracting writers of comedy since Aristophanes penned “Lysistrata” as a vehicle for the young Joan Rivers.”
― Gina Barreca

“ကျွန်တော်တို့ဟာ ဗဟုသဘောနဲ့ခြားနားခြင်းကို အခြေခံတဲ့ဒီမိုကရက်တစ်လူ့အဖွဲ့အစည်းဆီကိုသွားမယ်ဆိုရင် အခြေခံအကျဆုံးဖြစ်တဲ့ စာပေအနုပညာနဲ့ ရုပ်ရှင်လိုယဉ်ကျေးမှုဆိုင်ရာတွေမှာ ပြောင်းလဲမှသာလျှင် အလုပ်ဖြစ်မှာပါ။ တစ်ဖက်ကလည်း ကျွန်တော်တို့ဟာ ဗဟုသဘောဆန်တဲ့သီးခြားအမှတ်လက္ခဏာတွေကိုရှာတွေ့ပြီး နားလည်မှသာလျှင်အလုပ်ဖြစ်မှာပါ။”
― မင်းခက်ရဲ, ကြည်အေးလေ့လာချက်

“Human beings don’t naturally get along. For example, some people think that your possessions become theirs if they can take them when you’re not looking.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“Men have been packaged by society so well as elusive and mysterious that if you score one for yourself, you are suddenly deemed worthy of respect. This form of advertising has aided men for years, with women placing their best foot forward to present themselves to be found worthy of a man’s approval.”
― Elelwani Anita Ravhuhali, From Seeking To Radiating Love: Evolution is unavoidable in the process of overpowering doubt

“Be open to learning new things.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“The first step to learning new things is the realisation that we don’t know. Some get stuck on this step, and some never arrive to it. Some get to advance to the second step, which is accepting that we don't know. Thereafter, some will further advance into seeking knowledge to fill the gap. Then, some will seek understanding of that knowledge. From that group, which is usually only a few individuals, some will apply that understanding to obtain results. But the process doesn't end there. Because some will analyse those results. Then after that, some will report the results for others to gain insight. Then the cycle starts again. In the end, the question is: where are you in this process of learning?”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Learning something doesn't guarantee that you'll retain the knowledge forever.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Be open to learning new things. That's how we grow and evolve.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“An improvement comes through openness and willingness.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Spend as much time on lessons as needed. You don't want to have any regrets.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Be open to share and receive lessons. It's a cycle of life.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Utilise the internet to gain more knowledge. At times people are busy completing their own lessons, thus unable to teach you everything that you need to know.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Nothing is known in a minute. Nothing is known in one shot.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Things could be messy and clumsy the first time you try something. But with time, the mess starts to disappear.”
― Mitta Xinindlu