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Waste Quotes

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Waste Quotes

“Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.”

People States Government Social Citizens Waste Agency Officials Contracts Bureaucrats Breach Social Contract Government Officials

Author:Bob Riley

“Side by side with the miseries of underdevelopment...we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissable. This superdevelopment consists in an excessive availability of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups and makes people slaves of "possession" and immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better. This is the civilization of consumption, or "consumerism," which involves so much throwing away and waste.”

“This welfare for wealthy companies wastes taxpayer dollars, harms the environment, and makes a mockery of the recent reductions in federal social spending programs.”

Social Company Environment Waste Program Dollars Spending Harm Welfare Wealthy Taxpayers Reduction Mockery

Author:Ralph Nader

“Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel-cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice. A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste.”

Thinking Way Has Beens Whole Lasts Order Three Social Work Economic Century Waste Economics Productions Envy Confusion Consumption Cages Trash Avarice Squirrels Social Systems

Author:Dorothy L. Sayers

“The existence of very pious feelings, in conjunction with intolerance, cruelty, and selfish policy, has never ceased to surprise and perplex those who have viewed it calmly from a distance. ... It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. What destruction of the beautiful monuments of past ages, what waste of life, what disturbance of domestic and social happiness, what perverted feelings, what blighted hearts, have always marked its baneful progress!”

“[On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.”

World Important Done Social Bits Term Pieces Land Honor Waste Criticism Critics Various Contemporary Relief Insignificant Grumbling Waste Land

Author:T. S. Eliot

“Penology...has become torture and foolishness, a waste of money and a cause of crime...a blotting out of sight and heightening of social anxiety.”

Social Causes Crime Waste Anxiety Sight Prison Torture Foolishness Social Anxiety

Author:Paul Goodman

“Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals.”

Individual Social Consciousness Huge Waste Labor Competition Unlimited Social Consciousness

Book:Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

Source: Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

“Social mores change with time, like fashion - who knows where it might all end up? I especially like the idea that waste, impoliteness and overpopulation become "abominations," although I'm not sure recycling one's aunt will ever truly catch on.”

Knows Ideas Ends Might Social Fashion Waste Not Sure Aunt Recycling Abomination Overpopulation

Author:Jasper Fforde

“Every nation-state tends towards the imperial - that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police, propaganda, courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civic virtue at the top. Still it should be said of the political left, we expect something better. And correctly. We put more trust in those who show a measure of compassion, who denounce the hideous social arrangements that make war inevitable and human desire omnipresent; which fosters corporate selfishness, panders to appetites and disorder, waste the earth.”

“You know, 600,000 millionaires get a Social Security check every month. I think there's enough waste and inefficiency.”

Thinking Knows Enough Social Security Months Waste Checks Social Security Millionaire Inefficiency

Author:Richard Lamm

“Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.”

Matter Political Social Poor Poverty Rich Society Waste Vegan Rebellious Rich And Poor Uselessness Rich Poor Riches And Poors

Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

“All over the world, social innovation is tackling some of the most pressing problems facing society today - from fair trade, distance learning, hospices, urban farming and waste reduction to restorative justice and zero-carbon housing. But most of these are growing despite, not because of, help from governments.”

“Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers”

“Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”

Source: Les Misérables

“No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.”

Humans Country Order Social Rich Waste Resources Investing Unemployment Human Resources Menace Extravagance Social Order Demoralization

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1934, Volume 3

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1934, Volume 3

“Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It's terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can't see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isn't as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn't: it's just a waste.”

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies . . . despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level.”

“Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.”

Source: Flow: the psychology of optimal experience

“We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us.”