Social Priorities Quotes

Wealth is the means and people are the ends.

Environmentalism is a luxury. Just like being a vegetarian is a luxury. When you have to worry about eating - you're not going to be worried about where the food's coming from, or who made your shoes. Poverty, whether planned or not planned, is a way of making environmentalism moot.

If I say that I am more interested in preventing the slaughter of large whales than I am in improving housing conditions for people, I am likely to shock some of my friends.

It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?

Maybe there's two types of people in the world: those people who favor humans over ideology, and those people who favor ideology over humans.

I always say I was a liberal, but I wasn't active in politics. I just assumed I was a liberal because I was black and I was a woman. And I know now that sounds really foolish, but I had different priorities.

Russian women are now interested in clothes. But they will never attach supreme importance to fashions as do Europeans and American women, because they are too vitally interested in all the various projects going on in their country.

We talk a lot about individual rights, but in fact Americans are very willing to give up our individual rights if it means our property values will be protected, and so on.

Many more people in the world are concerned about sports than human rights.

We live in a world where losing your phone is more dramatic than losing your virginity

Some countries elevate and value community. Some serve the state to the detriment of individual people, and some, like the United States, celebrate individuality to a fault.

We know more about Tom [Cruise] and Katie [Holmes] than we do about global warming. We're the most entertained, least informed people in the world.

We have to start grounding our policies in facts and recognize that a strong economy is critical for funding progressive priorities.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?

I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.

I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy. We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their [bleeping] Representatives are.

The tantrums of cloth-headed celluloid idols are deemed fit for grown-up conversation, while silence settles over such a truly important matter as food.

I think that people should be paying a lot more attention to other issues, rather than who's the top 10 this or... who's the sexiest or the most beautiful.

I cherish the relationships and friendships I have with the people in my life and take every opportunity I have to make time for them.

If world peace was as important to people as getting tweeted back by their favorite celebrity, we'd live in a blissful Utopia.

Leaders are not pale reflectors of major social conflicts; they play up some, play down others, ignore still others.

Budgets are moral documents. Federal funding should reflect the priorities and the values of the majority of the American people.

In America, we have subsidized private jets, big banks and hedge fund managers. Wouldn't it make more sense to subsidize kids?

I think that driving is the least important issue. We as women have a lot more things to tackle before we get to the issue of driving, such as the opportunity to work in any field we choose.