Societal Restrictions Quotes

A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.

It seems to me that we are living in an increasingly unfree society.

Democracy means doing whatever you want without asking permission of anybody but your boss, your doctor, your lawyer, your landlord, your bank, your city, your state and federal authorities, and your wife and children.

God has replaced sex as the unmentionable.

We live in a society that will send us to prison if we make use of time-honored sacred plants to explore our own consciousness. Yet surely the exploration and expansion of the miracle of our consciousness is the essence of what it is to be human? By demonstrating and persecuting whole areas of consciousness, we may be denying ourselves the next vital step in our own evolution.

You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.

I'm beginning to think theres more freedom in North korea sometimes than there is in the United States.

I'd been brought up in a society which didn't talk about sex, food, money, religion or politics. Those things were all deemed slightly rude.

When my mother was young, only two professions were open to women ; teaching and nursing. She chose nursing, but the teaching profession was full of talented women like her, confined there in part because they had few career options.

The more bans you have in a society, the more you will have radical elements.

Society indeed conspires to keep you ball and chained.

I don't believe we shall ever again have any form of society in which men will be free. One should not hope for it. One should not hope for anything. Hope is invented by politicians to keep the electorate happy.

As a kid, you get to the stage where you realise the gender barriers that exist in society and what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do.

My mother sang. But back in the day, it was looked down upon if the lady of the house wanted to sing in public. So, she couldn't pursue her musical aspirations.

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art.

All of us confront limits of body, talent, temperament. But that is not all. We are, all of us, also constrained by our time, our place, our civilization.

In my village, girls have limited opportunities. If they get admission in a college, only a few households would allow them to go for further studies.

What kind of country is this where a woman can't weep her heart out on the highways and byways without being tormented by retired bill-brokers!

How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?