“Change in society, social change, routinizes a key concept in sociology. Everyone knows what it means. Change brings a characteristic future of modernity into focus, namely permanent transformation, while basic concepts and the certainties that support them remain constant. Metamorphosis, by contrast, destabilizes these certainties of modern society. It shifts the focus to ‘being in the world’ and ‘seeing the world’, to events and processes which are unintended, which generally go unnoticed, which prevail beyond the domains of politics and democracy as side effects of radical technical and economic modernization. They trigger a fundamental shock, a sea change which explodes the anthropological constants of our previous existence and understanding of the world. Metamorphosis in this sense means simply that what was unthinkable yesterday is real and possible today.” 

I think obviously we need to work harder at extending the women's movement. How do women who have prepared for careers and have a child get back to the workplace and still fulfill maternal roles?

There is certainly greatness in the '60s generation. They changed our attitudes about race in America, which was long overdue. They didn't just stand up and salute when told to go to war. Women finally began to realize a more equal place in our society.

We lost our way and allowed greed and excess to become the twin pillars of too much of the financial culture. We became a society utterly absorbed in consumption and dismissive of moderation.

As young parents of three girls, living in California during the late Sixties and early Seventies, Meredith and I couldn't help but be aware of the rising level of dialogue, debate, commentary, and proclamations about the place of women in society and about how to raise females in light of this raised consciousness.

You convey something that the public either trusts or it does not trust, and it has to do with the content and how you handle the news, but it also just has something to do with your persona.

I was unknown because I came to Washington from the West. I started covering Watergate. Immodestly, I'd say I did it pretty well, in part because it was hard to go wrong.

Cable penetrates 70 percent of American audiences now.

Don't overstate Fox News. It's still much smaller than the least of the network niches.

“isolation is a recurring factor in poverty and backwardness around the world, whether that is physical isolation or cultural isolation, for any number of particular reasons” 

“Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes! There is no high moral principle that prevents it. What prevents it are tenure rules that have saddled so many colleges with so many self-indulgent prima donnas who seem to think that they are philosopher kings, when in fact they are often grossly ignorant or misinformed outside the narrow confines of their particular specialty.” 

“Despite whatever the left may say, or even believe, about their concern for the poor, their actual behavior shows their interest in the poor to be greatest when the poor can be used as a focus of the left’s denunciations of society.” 

“A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.9” 

“To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.” 

“I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.”

“The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.” 

“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.” 

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

When members of a society wish to secure that society's rich heritage they cherish their arts and respect their artists. The esteem with which we regard the multiple cultures offered in our country enhances our possibilities for healthy survival and continued social development.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members.

I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate.