Best Societal Norms Quotes

"When we talk about eliminating gender roles, the point wasn't to make it so that you were ashamed for doing traditional stuff, it was that you had an option not to."

"Men aren't allowed to step into what were traditionally more feminine roles."

"If these assumptions could be proven faulty, that means that our entire society is built on a lie, or at least a mistake."

"It's becoming increasingly clear that a number of parts of the old normal may not be part of the new normal."

"You're learning to embrace yourself and support that uniqueness rather than trying to continue to force yourself to conform to a society that just doesn't serve your growth."

"It's about morals, it still goes back to morals."

"Somehow in the world we live in today, an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life."

"Sometimes, I feel like, as women, we tend to downplay ourselves, we tend to dim our light. We’re kind of conditioned, socially, to be humble."

"The normality in our society is that people are disconnected from who they are."

"The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues."

"It's not embarrassing, it's not bad to be single. It's not bad to be 30 and single, it's not bad to be 40 and single. It's not bad to be anything and single."

"Knowing how much Tess has helped me with my journey, it made me realize that if I post pictures of myself normalizing things society says fat girls can't do... my goal is there."

"Now adults wear sneakers, but everyone knows adults are generally not playing basketball."

"And the more I learned, the more I realized I was lied to. We're taught to go to school to get a degree, to get a job, so we can then get a job and climb the corporate ladder. But wealthy people don't do that."

"The way the world works is we sacrifice for others and others sacrifice for us."

"If there were literally tens of millions of people all across the world who felt like deep burning in pain and anxiety and depression because they could see, and we had bunches of studies that showed they lived happier lives if they blinded themselves, that's very different than gender...because blinding yourself means imposing a disability, and you don't impose a disability by transitioning."

"Showing your body and showing your skin or not should not take any respect away from you."

"Beauty is about loving yourself, not caring about what anybody else thinks. Just be yourself; that's all that matters."

"We have been lying to young people about their futures, saying you only have one path, and it's college."

"As a society, we have literally put blinders on young people... We've told them that university and college is the only thing that matters."

"It's very dangerous to make the assumption that what is considered to be normal in our society is actually healthy and natural."

"Especially when you escape the black community, right? You can tell people the stuff that you see that you might deem as normal, and when you get in these other rooms, they don't see it as normal necessarily."

"Just because something is the norm doesn't mean it's normal."

"We actually don't realize that we get to make the rules. If we all get comfortable with aging, we can debunk the system that is like putting these pressures out there."

"Political violence has absolutely no place in America."

"The message is reinforced through the whole book: what we think is normal in our society from the point of human needs and human evolution is absolutely abnormal."

"It's better to find the place that you belong, you know, and open people might be very annoyed that they're not appreciated by more conservative types."

"It is a cautionary tale of what those who act in a capitalist idea or an idea of oneself should and will face if they ever decide to depart from that they've known."

"I cannot understand why people are so opposed to this; it's not like we're sending kids down into the mines."

"The people who voice that idea on us have an agenda. 'Be kind, don't be prideful, be humble.' You know what that keeps us? Small."

"My fantasy, my dream of how things should be is that people don't see naked people as a problem, don't see it as something that's abnormal."

"It is the best thing I've ever done. I think it's opened my life up, it's opened my eyes to see people for what they are, to see the human body for what it isn't, to see how our clothes society restricts so much in the everyday life."

"You can't force people to be normal because whatever people are doing outside of that coercion is what normal is."

"I think you're incredibly authentic, and it confuses the [heck] out of some people who have been societally conditioned in a bad way."

"The goal for me is to have a young boy who's able to express himself well because society has taught boys that they're not allowed to have feelings and emotions."

"If we want to do a better job at reaching out to people, we have to be willing to meet people where they are."

"I think, in many cases, these are societal norms... we have been conditioned to believe."

"If we as a species kind of have a consensus on what moral behavior is, then that becomes objective."

"You don't actually need externals to be happy. Society brainwashes us into thinking we need the externals to be happy, but actually you don't."

"The default is freedom until there's a good reason to limit that freedom."

"I don't play the game of turfs or whatever where they think that the defining experience of womanhood is like to be brutalized by men."

"Ho ho, you're right. It just goes to show that nobody is above the law and even grown-ups get told off."

"Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third-story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing."

"I think it's a sinister, secretly ingrained thing that we don't think about often."

"There are many seemingly universal truths that societies clung to over time about the inherent differences between men and women, some of which, of course, we now know are a load of crap."

"In France, we now have the paradoxical situation where the burqa has been banned, but face masks will be compulsory."

"Let yourself age; there is beauty in aging, and it is inevitable."

"Listen, I want the overarching message of this video to be: let yourself age."

"The roles were discerned that way, and they don't have to stay that way."

"The obsession with youth requires a third tenant to be added to that list because we are dealing with the disneyfication of human beings."

"People generally wear clothes when they leave their house."

"Follow the rules and you'll turn into somebody."

"Normalize this, normalize that. Not everything has to be normal, and also, something being abnormal doesn't mean it is bad."

"Men are judged by the caliber of woman they can get, while women are judged by the caliber of man they can keep."

"After Chinese New Year, I'll turn 30, fittingly labeled as a leftover woman due to my age."

"Shai Wan Ru, a 28-year-old feminist and freelance writer, believes that marriage is an unfair institution."

"It's not about what you know, it's about who you know."

"If society is apathetic about a norm, it means the norm no longer exists or is worth upholding."

"Establish societal norms from our local communities; everybody is happier."

"Liberty did not mean the freedom to do whatever you wanted, it meant the freedom to do what you should do."

"A sigma male is a man who lives life based on his own rules, thriving for his passion, not distracted by societal norms or standards."

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals."

"Men and women are different but they're complimentary, and that's a good thing."

"Ultimately, B stars excels at discussing cultural concepts and challenging societal norms."

"This society today is telling us to do what feels good."

"The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions."

"How can we create a world where it's okay to say the disappointments out loud, can we say our frustrations out loud, can we say the things that break our heart and make us sad out loud, the same as we're going to say the wins out loud?"

"Originally, we agreed that a two-year-old person probably shouldn't be punished later in life for a decision they didn't make."

"Just cause you've had sex before marriage doesn't mean you're never going to find somebody who's Christian who will marry you."

"The propaganda to buy a house or to follow a prescribed set of rules for the American dream is so powerful that even losing your own houses doesn't change people's perspective."

"Any world where something as disgusting as that can be normalized is a world I don't want to be participating in."

"Loveless sex is not empowering, and teaching women that they should be able to compete with men on having loveless sex, only one gender is going to win that."

"Nowadays, however, the idea that ultra-wealthy people have to in some way contribute to the social good, that's actually a well-accepted normative idea."

"Gender and sex are correlative in the sense that we are taught that characteristics associated with sex are also associated with the gender."

"So much of the history of the law has been about policing love, whether it's interracial relationships, intercaste relationships. The constitutional project is about remedying the disadvantage of caste, enabling inter-religious and intercaste marriages."

"Most people don't want to be millionaires and billionaires... most people just want a house, economic security, being able to look after their family."

"There is absolutely no circumstance in which it is ever okay, whether you film it or not, to abuse a child."

"You've got to take sexuality out of the realm of societal shame."

"There's nothing wrong with being unattractive, but you shouldn't let that define your worth or value to society."

"We've always had processes for moderating content, as far back as human civilization goes."

"If you tell the truth, you get in trouble for it. Every kid knows that."

"Why does my gender expression need to be such a big deal in real life when it's not in a Nintendo game?"

"Why isn’t "good enough" good enough when that’s perfectly fine for 90% of the population?"

"Why is there still this fallacy that men like skinny women? It's totally women doing it to other women."

"It's that the path to true happiness is one of self-actualization that will most likely defy societal norms in one way or another."

"Everybody likes a nice comforting lie. It sells a lot better than the uncomfortable truth."

"Why are opinionated women seen as bitches, when opinionated men are seen as bosses?"

"The late great writer, David Foster Wallace, gave an analogy of two young fish swimming along who don't recognize what water is because it's so omnipresent. This speaks to our societal norms and personal blind spots."

"All kinds of political movements that have worked against hierarchical constructs are always going to be considered violent because they're uprooting the pre-established norms."

"Any sensible group of people wouldn't steal from, kill, or commit adultery against each other."

"I think that if you were to ask non-crazy feminists what are you pushing for today, I think ideally in a society, men and women ought to be able to pursue anything they want without being judged or shot down because of their gender."

"What does it say about our past when just a hundred years ago, people were essentially shopping for infants?"

"It's a stark reminder of how different social norms and practices were just a century ago."

"Define 'woman'? A person who embodies their own understanding and expression of womanhood, regardless of societal norms."

"Eat without guilt, regardless of what society says."

"It's healthy, I think, to take a step back from supposed norms and examine why we see them that way."

"Women and Children First. It means that the men on that ship are to sacrifice himself today so that the generation can live tomorrow."

"The most shocking thing in this world is that everyone is walking around starving for more and real intimacy, and yet we're all ashamed of that natural desire."

"A gentleman is only respected for giving more than he takes."

"What's acceptable in 2013 may not be acceptable in 2018 or 2020."

"Society just puts this timeline on all of us to follow... We don't all have to follow that."

"We have a very puritanical mindset when it comes to talking about sex, but we're porn-obsessed, so we want to see it, we just don't want to talk about it."

"Of course it's a man who killed his ex-girlfriend in a jealous rage, not the other way around."

"Men and women have far more in common than they have differences. We fixate to our detriment on these minuscule differences."

"I think that the reason that people will be like, 'Well, those guys must be gay,' is actually just an indication that, well, there's something sort of broken with male friendships in general."

"I think that there's something about, you know, men really just wanna be intimate with one another, and self disclose, and be around one another. But the only way that they could do that is direct all that passion and that energy towards a guy with a ball who's not either one of them."

"Our Notions of fairness or lack of fairness become profoundly important, and we've got to understand where they come from."

"Think about it, it's food for thought. Status quo is wrong."

"Tracy actually had a family, Tracy actually had a marriage. Tracy was actually doing the right way."

"Family, school, army - the three guiding steps which make a child into a man."

"It's okay to just be your natural skin color."

"I grew up in a household in which my father worked and my mother stayed at home... I regarded both working and staying at home as means to take care of themselves, support their own interests and responsibilities."

"I think you're an insane person because you have to realize that how people when people talk."

"Our understanding of gender and sex can be if we are like a little bit more nuanced in terms of how we understand it, I think that there is room in our currently existing understanding of reality for trans people to exist."

"We celebrate death more than life. That's why we don't give people flowers while they're living."

"When you are young, you worry about what people think of you; in middle age, you don't care what other people think of you; in your older years, you finally figure out that people weren't thinking about you anyway."

"In this culture, the norm is neither healthy nor is it natural. In fact, a norm, I think, is making us sick."

"Being weird isn't a crime but people like to treat weirdos like they're committing crimes."

"It's one of those things that shouldn't be uncomfortable because we're all going to die."

"The goal of cancel culture isn't necessarily to eliminate one person from society but to make certain ideas untenable."

"There are black women who think that they are going to get relationship security, a provider, and a stable partner, and really that's what you should be getting out of marriage."

"Probably one of the biggest reasons why so many people die alone is... you want something that is percentage by percentage unlikely."

"We have given in to feelings and emotions... 'I feel like a woman, therefore I am a woman.'"

"One of the ways that we can do that is through public shaming."

"Men and women are two halves of the same whole."

"You can still blame people for being dicks, though."

"Women are not Collectibles; they're not Xbox achievements; they don't give XP to you to level up your masculinity meter."

"Money isn't value, clout isn't value, good looks aren't value. Value is value."

"Freedom is a multi-edged sword. You have the right to say whatever you want to say, but that doesn't mean everybody has to listen."

"Racism... is such a norm in this culture that it's not seen as racism."

"No one's forcing anyone. They're asking, and if you don't do it, you're rude. That's how society works, my dude. We live in a society."

"You have rules and regulations to protect kids for a reason. That's why you don't see 10-year-olds driving vehicles, buying alcohol, buying tobacco, gambling, and things like that."

"It's not about attacking men; it's about challenging the culture that men are being dragged into."

"I think there's a value in gender roles when it's not forced on you."

"Happiness is a big deal, and it is. How about cease demonizing your neighbors that don't believe in specific supernatural propositions, is that so much to ask?"

"It's like people want to be able to label everything, and if they can't label you, then the only thing they can call you is crazy."

"We need conversation to define what's right and what's wrong."

"Plastic surgery used to feel like a really big milestone in someone's life; now, it seems like we've normalized beauty procedures to the point of them being on par with a trip to the dentist."

"This is how you see real tragedy occur to a family that was doing everything right, pay their taxes, pay their bills, does everything right."

"It put a lot of things in perspective, and one of those things was that nobody really cares about us. About any of us."

"Who has it easier in society, men or women? Definitely men because they get paid more and they also don't have to deal with sexual harassment in the streets."

"There's a lot more virtue that attends to being a responsible mother, marrying dad, and then there being two parents there to help raise the kid."

"Telling a woman she's a bad mom is like the most offensive thing you could say to her."

"You're never overdressed; everyone else is just underdressed."

"This kind of political violence is not normal, it is Un-American."

"We need to allow people to find satisfaction and a fulfilling life in being a farmer, being a good husband, being a mother. It doesn't always have to be saving the world."

"The system is imaginary. It is not who we are; it's not what must happen; it's a choice."

"We are living to work instead of working to live."

"Embrace the inner child that is not constrained by how one should behave, speak, and think in the adult world."

"On the outside looking in, this family looked like your typical All-American family."

"In our culture, it seems that there's this notion that the younger you are when you achieve something, the more impressive and worthy of praise you and/or that accomplishment is."

"Social conditioning is a sociological process of training individuals in a society to respond in a manner generally approved by the society in general, and peer groups within society."

"These authors don't think they're doing anything wrong, but as soon as you read it with the roles reversed, you realize how insane it is."

"On paper, the Sisters of Silence seem like the perfect woman: unshakably loyal, fit, and doesn't speak. But the reality is, there are no perfect women out there."

"The brilliance of Fooly Cooly is that it demonstrates that the so-called adult world makes no sense. It is crazy and all over the place, and it is full of nonsensical cultural and social norms and expectations."

"People don't have to be productive in order to be valuable."

"Somewhere in there, a line must be drawn both legally and morally, and maybe not in the same place."

"Most people are anti-fascist, even if they don't know it, and even if they don't know what fascism is."

"We have been conditioned to believe that it is okay to spend money on something that we don't own."

"Why do we get so mad when people waste our money, but we don't get as mad when people waste our time?"

"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently."

"People aren't bad just because they have conservative beliefs and people aren't bad just because they're on the left."

"There's a just expectation on the part of the men that there should be some constraints on women's behavior."

"Privacy is not private. Privacy is social. It is societal."

"Society decides on beauty standards, and I don't have to follow that."

"This worthiness issue is something that is also drilled into you from the moment you are young."

"We need to step out of the tribe and actually be honest."

"Freedom does not mean that I approve of all the ways you use your freedom."

"Thinking should be permitted. Thinking should be allowed."

"Ever since Eve was tempting Adam with the Apple, women have been blamed for the bad behavior of men."

"Don't sexualize children. That should not be a revolutionary statement."

"If you look at a cop dressed up as a cop, you go, 'That's a cop.' You see someone dressed up as a fireman, you go, 'Yeah, that dude runs into burning buildings.' You see a woman dressed up super revealing, you go, 'Yeah, I want to go talk to her. She looks like she's open to being approached.'"

"When we teach girls that their virginity makes them special and valuable, we're sending the simultaneous message that without their virginity, they're tainted and damaged."

"You come first, the society does not come first."

"Sometimes you have to question societal norms that we just take for granted."

"Marriage has nothing to do with love or romance. Marriage is about duty, obligation."

"Not caring what other people think is the greatest form of self-love."

"Our culture is extremely reluctant to speak about female competitiveness because it goes against the myth that we have that men are these uncivilized competitive brutes and women are these angelic angels that are just above all that."

"The entire social and even political climate in China encourages marriage and childbearing."

"We have no universal definition for money and nobody has some exclusive right to set that definition either."

"Decency, fairness, and freedom does not have to be re-earned every time a black person steps outside of their house when white people just get to be white."

"According to social media algorithms, there is actually only one correct human shape."

"I think I'm helping them embrace their boyhood in a generation where it's really suppressed, where men are becoming more feminine."

"I think families should stick together. I certainly agree with that."

"You don't betray the family. You don't leave the clan. You don't leave the war."

"You shouldn't worry so much about the age difference."

"Heteronormativity is a social system in which heterosexuality is granted status as the normal sexuality."

"It's not so much about how society perceives the individual as much as how the individual wants to be perceived."

"Success and fulfillment often require balancing personal ambitions with the realities of biological and societal expectations."

"Boys Don't Cry is the song that challenges the 'men should never show their emotion' macho BS."

"How can anyone POSSIBLY care about ANY of this? All of it was the most absolutely bizarre, middle class WASPy suburban bullshit concerns that I could not imagine real, actual human beings being that concerned about."

"Quality of life laws have to be enforced: urinating on the street, defecating, sleeping, shooting heroin on the street should be illegal."

"When was the last time being rude was against the law? Because if rudeness is an arrestable offense, arrest us all."

"So many women have been legitimately and systematically abused and gaslit over many years, and when they finally speak up, they get pushed down by the legal system, by society, and even blamed."

"Most notably, our society is so shaming of male vulnerability that the vast majority of victims who identify as men do not come forward, and when they do, they're laughed at or accused of being the real abuser."

"Feminism is still relevant in today's society. They put up with a whole lot of [expletive] that us men just don't have to."

"The recognition that your life can be entirely fulfilling without children means that people are more ready to say, no I don't want to have them."

"You're right, it's bowing to a minority trying to please everyone but in the end offending a lot of people."

"Singlism: the stereotyping and discrimination against single people."

"Prevention is the best cure if we as a society embrace masculinity and encourage men to become strong versions of themselves."