George Saunders Quotes

We fight the stereotypes, but in fighting them, we show them. There are stereotypes for a reason.

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.

Philosophers are men hired by the well-to-do to prove that everything is all right.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common

We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television.

It never occurred to me that some people were seen as wrong or even different.

When you accept the way things are, there's really no other way to operate than the way you've been conditioned to. You live in America: you're free to vote, you go vote, and you continue to see the problems of being a nationalistic society. You don't really know what to do because you're conditioned to feel that's just the way things are.

We, as a society, have become very fixed in our ideas of how things were, how they are, and how they should be.

I remember once at the end of a BBC job interview the manager said to me: 'I didn't realise people like you were clever.' I don't think he was being intentionally nasty. At that time in the BBC he was surrounded by clones of himself, give or take some facial hair and glasses.

A big part of the problem that we face today is that our children have been taught at schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticize others' positions, no matter how odious.

We live in a society and a culture and an economic model that tries to make everything look right.

The hazing experience and then the subsequent participation in the group forces its members to maintain the status quo and traditions at all costs. It demands mindlessness and unquestioned loyalty, resulting in boring people who have little ability to think for themselves or have an opposing viewpoint from those who have the most social power.

... in so many Muslim communities now, saving face trumps critical thinking and truth-telling. This is why reform from within Islam is so difficult.

It’s not the mainstream. It’s just the status quo.

Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

No member of any society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what the society holds to be true.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.

Still how unenlightened and ignorant are the very nations we term civilized!

Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.

Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.

Nothing is more difficult, in general, than to make a nation perceive anything as true, or seek its own interest, in any manner but as its forefathers have opined and acted.

You couldn't advance in a finance department in this country unless you thought that the world was flat.

Women have been trained in our culture and society to ask for what we want instead of taking what we want. We've been really indoctrinated with this culture of permission. I think it's true for women, and I think it's true for people of color. It's historic, and it's unfortunate and has somehow become part of our DNA. But that time has passed.