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Social Science Quotes

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Social Science Quotes

“A moment’s reflection shows that women, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of this more accurate understanding of civilization. As we saw in earlier chapters, tracing the place of women in societies without writing often means using clues left, quite literally, in the fabric of material culture, such as painted ceramics that mimic both textile designs and female bodies in their forms and elaborate decorative structures. To take just two examples, it’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early Mesopotamian cuneiform documents or in the layout of Peru’s Chavín temples sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe or sculptor, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in earlier times through concrete practices such as the solid geometry and applied calculus of weaving or beadwork. What until now has passed for ‘civilization’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.”

WomenHistoryCivilizationMathematicsSocial Science
Author:David Graeber, David Wengrow
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“Biology teaches us that we’re competitive social animals, with all the instincts you’d expect from such creatures. And consciousness is useful—that’s why it evolved. So shouldn’t it stand to reason that we’d be hyper-conscious of our deepest biological incentives? And yet, most of the time, we seem almost willfully unaware of them. We all know they’re there. And yet they make us uncomfortable, so we mentally flinch away.”

Self DeceptionSocial Science
Book:The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
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“What’s It All About (The Sonnet) What is this world all about! What is this society all about! What is this life all about! What is our existence all about! What are the roads all about! What are the skyscrapers all about! What are the bridges all about! What are our feet all about! What is science all about! What is faith all about! What is technology all about! What is politics all about! 'Tis all about people and their welfare. All notions to the contrary cause only despair.”

HumanismSocialismSocial IssuesPolitical ScienceSocial StudiesSocial DevelopmentSocial ScienceHumanitarian PoetrySocial WelfarePolitical Poem
Book:Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather
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“This obstacle which should be relentlessly combatted as a sign of narrow-minded party fanaticism and backward political culture, is reinforced for a journal like ours through the fact that in social sciences the stimulus to the posing of scientific problems is in actuality always given by practical "questions" Hence the very recognition of the existence of a scientific problem coincides personally, with the possession of specially oriented motives and values A Joumal which has come into existence under the Influence of a general interest in a concrete problem, will always include among its contributors persons who are personally Interested In these problems because certain concrete situations seem to be incompatible with, or seem to threaten. the realization of certain ideal values In which they belIeve. A bond of similar ideals will hold this circle of contrIbutors together and it will be the basis of a further recruitment. This in turn will tend to give the Journal, at least in its treatment of questions of practical social policy, a certain "character" which of course inevitably accompanies every collaboration of vigorously sensitive persons whose evaluative standpoint regarding the problems cannot be entirely expressed even In purely theoretical analysis; in the criticIsm of practIcal recommendations and measures it quite legitimately finds expression under the particular conditions above discussed.”

ValueSocial SciencePracticality
Book:The Theory of Social and Economic Organization
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“Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.”

ReligionFreedomLibertyPowerScience FictionMythologyTyrannyTheologyIdeologySocial SciencePost ApocalypticAutocracy
Book:Heretics of Dune
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“Since Ivy League admissions data is a notoriously classified commodity, when when Harvard officials said in previous years that alumni kids were just better, you had to take their word. But then federal investigators came along and pried open those top-secret files. The Harvard guys were lying. This past fall, after two years of study, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that, far from being more qualified or equally qualified, the average admitted legacy at Harvard between 1981 and 1988 was significantly LESS qualified than the average admitted nonlegacy. Examining admissions office ratings on academics, extracurriculars, personal qualities, recommendations, and other categories, the OCR concluded that "with the exception of the athletic rating, [admitted] nonlegacies scored better than legacies in ALL areas of comparison." In his recent book, "Preferential Policies", Thomas Sowell argues that doling out special treatment encourages lackluster performance by the favored and resentment from the spurned. His far-ranging study flits from Malaysia to South Africa to American college campuses. Legacies don't merit a word.”

ClassPrivilegeAffirmative ActionSocial Science
Author:John Larew
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“Anthropology studies the phenomenon of man, not simply man's mind, his body, evolution, origins, tools, art, or groups alone, but as parts or aspects of a general pattern, or whole. To emphasize this fact and make it a part of their ongoing effort, anthropologists have brought a general word into widespread use to stand for the phenomenon, and that word is culture.”

CultureMankindBehaviorWholenessAnthropologySocial StudiesSocial ScienceAnthropologistStudies Of Culture
Book:The Invention of Culture
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“Let's imagine we're standing together on the launch pad at NASA's Cape Canaveral facility near Orlando, and staring up at the stars together. As I write this, the last constellation above the horizon is Centaurus. The centaur's front head is a bright star. In fact, it's three stars—a pair called Alpha Centauri A and B, and, dimmest of the trio, Proxima Centauri. Here, look through this telescope. See? You can tell them apart. But what we can't see is that there is, in fact, a planet circling the faint light of Proxima Centauri. Man, I wish we could see it. Because that planet, Proxima Centauri b, is the nearest known exoplanet to Earth. [...] If we were to board a spacecraft and ride it from the outer edge of our atmosphere all the way to Proxima Centauri b, you and I, who boarded the ship fit and trim, chosen as we were from billions of applicants, would die before the voyage reached even 1/100th of the intervening distance. [...] At a speed of 20,000 miles per hour—the speed of our top-performing modern rockets—4.2 light years translates to more than 130,000 years of space travel. [...] So how will we ever get there? A generation ship. [...] the general notion is this: get enough human beings onto a ship, with adequate genetic diversity among us, that we and our fellow passengers cohabitate as a village, reproducing and raising families who go on to mourn you and me and raise new of their own, until, thousands of years after our ship leaves Earth's gravity, the distant descendants of the crew that left Earth finally break through the atmosphere of our new home. [...] A generation ship is every sociological and psychological challenge of modern life squashed into a microcosmic tube of survival and amplified—generation after generation. [...] The idea of a generation ship felt like a pointless fantasy when I first encountered it. But as I've spent the last few years speaking with technologists, academics, and policy makers about the hidden dangers of building systems that could reprogram our behavior now and for generations to come, I realized that the generation ship is real. We're on board it right now. On this planet, our own generation ship, we were once passengers. But now, without any training, we're at the helm. We have built lives for ourselves on this planet that extend far beyond our natural place in this world. And now we are on the verge of reprogramming not only the planet, but one another, for efficiency and profit. We are turning systems loose on the decks of the ship that will fundamentally reshape the behavior of everyone on board, such that they will pass those behaviors on to their progeny, and they might not even realize what they've done. This pattern will repeat itself, and play out over generations in a behavioral and technological cycle.”

TechnologyPsychologyCapitalismGreedArtificial IntelligenceSociologyDisturbingSocial ScienceSad TruthFuturism
Book:The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back
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“Przyznać trzeba, że nasi zwierzęcy towarzysze potrafią wytwarzać i odbierać informacje, czy to jednak oznacza, że posługują się językiem? Intuicyjna odpowiedź brzmi: nie. Ponieważ język jest czymś więcej niż wytwarzaniem i odbieraniem informacji, odpowiedź ta jest poprawna. Jednostki języka są zbudowane z prostych elementów składowych, które mogą być łączone na wiele sposobów, jednak wyłącznie pod warunkiem że odbywa się to zgodnie ze ściśle określonymi regułami. Jednostki takie, wraz z regułami ich łączenia, odróżniają język od innych dźwięków, które coś komunikują, na przykład od skamlenia.”

LanguagePsychologySocial Science
Author:Kosslyn and Rosenberg
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“Honor He Wrote Sonnet 56 It's the citizens’ duty to make a nation nonpartisan, Government is meant to serve as powerless figurehead. All my hopes lie in the hands of accountable citizens, A good politician acts a citizen, not political dunderhead. So no more procrastination with the curation of society, No more playing hooky in the school of life and sanity. Be the politician that you seek in the sewers of state, Not by law but by an indefatigable accountability. Democracy means rule of the people, not sleep of people, Yet that's what it means to people 'n politicians alike. But shhh, nobody is supposed to admit any of it in public, For discretion is the better part of a society of sleeping mice. Let sleeping slime sleep, if you are human, take charge now. Dream with your eyes open and keep your democracy vow.”

PoliticsDemocracySocial ResponsibilityPolitical ScienceCivicsSocial StudiesSocial ScienceHumanist PoetryPolitical PoemNonpartisan
Book:Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables
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“When the people don't give a damn about reason, they can be manipulated quite easily - and in such cases the perception of the people are manufactured by those controlling the narratives. As a result, ask an Azerbaijani, "who do you think is at fault for the conflict at Nagorno-Karabakh" and they'll say, "Armenia of course" - or ask an Indian, "who do you think is at fault for the conflict at Jammu-Kashmir", they'll say, "Pakistan of course". Hard as it may sound, whoever controls the narrative, controls the people. And the only way to break that spell is to practice reason, but without losing your warmth.”

CitizensPropagandaNationalismPolitical ScienceSocial StudiesGeopoliticsSocial ScienceGeopolitical TensionNagorno KarabakhNagorno Karabakh War
Book:I Vicdansaadet Speaking: No Rest Till The World is Lifted
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“Sonnet of National Sickness Wanna study a superpower, study America. Wanna study dysfunctional power, still study America. Wanna study spirituality, study India. Wanna study rotten spirituality, still study India. Wanna study rise of secularism, study Turkish Republic. Wanna study fall of secularism, still study Turkish Republic. Wanna study standards of beauty, study the Korean Republic. Wanna study doctored beauty, still study the Korean Republic. Wanna study pride and loyalty, study good old Britannia. Wanna study primeval pride and loyalty, still study Britannia. Wanna study statehood, study People's Republic of China. Wanna study the horrors of statehood, still study China. Every nation on earth suffers from a distinct ailment. The first step towards recovery is acknowledgement.”

PoetrySociologySocial IssuesPolitical PhilosophyPolitical ScienceSocial ScienceNation BuildingNation Builder
Book:Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World
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“While the culture of manager and therapist does not speak in the language of traditional moralities, it nonetheless proffers a normative order of life, with character ideals, images of the good life, and methods of attaining it. Yet it is an understanding of life generally hostile to older ideas of moral order. Its center is the autonomous individual, presumed able to choose the roles he wil play and the commitments he will make, not on the basis of higher truths but according to the criterion of life-effectiveness as the individual judges it.”

ReligionSocietyMoralityTraditionSocial ScienceManagerTherapistCivil ReligionManagerial Society
Book:Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
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“A nation with a thousand awakened citizens and a corrupt leader, is much more alive than a nation with an awakened leader and a thousand corrupt citizens.”

InspirationalPoliticalPoliticsLeadershipInspiringSocietyCitizensBrainy QuotesLeadership DevelopmentSocial ChangeSocial WorkPolitical PhilosophyPolitical ScienceSociety QuotesSocial PsychologySocial WorkerSocial ReformSocial ReformerSocial ScienceSocial NormsSociety ProblemSociety ThinkingSocial SciencesSocial WorkersCitizen PowerResponsible Citizen
Book:When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders
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“Als Leitwissenschaft für eine lebensfähige und lebenswerte menschliche Zukunft kommt mithin nur eine als Humanwissenschaft verstandene Geistes-, Kultur-und Sozialwissenschaft in Frage, die zwar vom Erkenntnis- und Erfahrungsraum der Naturwissenschaften ausgeht, sich jedoch nicht als deren bloßes Anhängsel versteht, sondern vielmehr auf die Selbstdefinitions- und -sublimationsmacht des Menschen als eines Geist-und Sozialwesens vertraut.”

Social ScienceKlimawandelPolitische öKologie
Book:Politische Ökologie: Eine Einführung
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“Dem Begriff der Politischen Ökologie kommt wohl nicht zuletzt deshalb eine besondere Bedeutung zu, weil er den Bezug zum letztlich wertsetzenden menschlichen Lebensverband herstellt und die schicksalhafte Verbindung zwischen der Gestaltung dieses Lebensverbands und dem Schicksal der Natur betont, ohne sich jedoch aus dem alle Um- und Mitwelt-Wissenschaften umfassenden "humanökologischen" Kontext zu lösen”

Social ScienceKlimawandelPolitische öKologiePolitical Ecology
Book:Politische Ökologie: Eine Einführung
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“Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).”

LoveLifeHumansTruthLife LessonsHumanityFriendshipFamilySocietyHuman NatureFriendsReflectionYoung AdultInsightMeaningMeaning Of LifeInsightfulYoung Adult FictionHumankindHuman BehaviorUrban FantasySocial IssuesSocial ScienceSocial CommentaryElvesReflectiveCyberpunkYoung Adult SeriesUrban Fantasy SeriesYoung Adult NovelsYoung Adult LiteratureElvenInside OurselvesYa Urban FantasyNq Mobile Omar KhanOmar Khan Nq Mobile
Book:The Other Side of Life
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“Economics [...] maximizing models are really arguing is that “people will always seek to maximize something,” [...] All they really add to analysis is a set of assumptions about human nature. The assumption, most of all, that no one ever does anything primarily out of concern for others; that whatever one does, one is only trying to get something out of it for oneself. In common English, there is a word for this attitude. It’s called “cynicism.” Most of us try to avoid people who take it too much to heart. In economics, apparently, they call it “science.”

ScienceEconomicsCynicismEconomistSocial ScienceRational ChoiceUtility Maximizing
Book:Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams
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“Systemic change is a slow and tedious process, It doesn't happen overnight by vandalizing society. If vandalism and activism were one and the same, Our jungly ancestors would've been the ideal humanity.”

Political ScienceSocial StudiesSocial ScienceHuman Rights ViolationClimate CrisisVandalismSystemic ChangeClimate ActivistClimate ActivismActivist Poetry
Book:Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence
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“Contrary to popular belief, politics is not the problem, the real bane of a democratic society is partisanism. Because politics involves interest of the people, whereas partisanism involves interest of the politicians.”

Political PhilosophyPolitical ScienceSocial StudiesDemocratic SocietySocial ScienceDemocracy QuotesPoliticians And PoliticsParty PoliticsNonpartisanismPartisanism
Book:Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence
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“Neoliberalism has, to a great extent, succeeded in replacing in-depth, critical, and independent social science with research funded by corporations to serve corporate interests. We are seeing a sharp decline of independent writers and researchers and a sharp rise of UX (user experience) jobs that are often narrow in scope, and solely focused on understanding users not to create a more informed and critical society, but simply to increase numbers, get users to consume more, and to increase profits for the few at the top.”

KnowledgeCapitalismAnthropologyEducation SystemSocial ScienceNeoliberalismUser ExperienceRuling ClassEthics And Science
Author:Louis Yako
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