Best Societal Expectations Quotes

"The problem isn't so much that we're encouraged to feel grateful for good things in our life, but that we're forbidden from expressing thoughts or feelings which contradict the message that we must at all times feel grateful."

"Don't let the world try to trick you into thinking you have to care about what is 'right' to care about. Care about the things you're into."

"Society has set the bar so low about what's possible and what's not."

"The demands that we put on like really young kids are just unbelievable."

"The more we live our life through the lens of 'will people think I look good like this?' we'll always be disappointed."

"You deserve to live a good life. I mean, yes, you got to work for it. That's hard, yes. That's the system we're in."

"True power comes not from conflict but from our ability to choose our own path, not the one society dictates."

"Build who you are not based on what society expects of you or what society wants of you."

"Kids nowadays are growing up so fast... I had absolutely zero shame and that's why most of the kids are the happiest and just do whatever they want because they don't care what other people think."

"In the end, we don't actually want authenticity; we just want people to act authentic."

"The art of not caring isn't about indifference or neglect; it's about discerning what truly matters, about embracing life with all its uncertainties and absurdities, about creating our essence in the face of societal expectations."

"The number one deepest regret of the dying is that they didn't live true to themselves, that they lived according to the expectations of others."

"Do what's best for you. Forget what other people think."

"You were created to be more than what people say you are."

"It's okay to not have it figured out. It's so silly that our society makes us think we have to have our lives figured out at like age 18."

"How hard is it for people to just do the right thing? Seriously, just do the right thing."

"Stop putting your own desires and dreams into a closet and ignoring them in order to be societally correct or to please the people that are around you."

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."

"All of us have been raised with this unconscious belief in productivity... it's all ego-driven."

"We have just been pitched for so long that the most important relationship that you will ever have in your entire life is your romantic relationship and who cares if you maintain your friendships because there will always be another friend you can make but there won't always be another guy."

"We're balancing so much, and I think what's happening is, because our society just doesn't really put the same amount of emphasis on friendships as it does romantic relationships, we think that we don't need to work hard at our friendships."

"A lot of us have been taught to 'just be positive' all the time, and never make anyone else feel bad either."

"We 20-somethings are groomed to believe that there is a particular path to success."

"You are not a loser; you are not a failure if you don't have a million things going on."

"It's quite hard to find somebody who knows how to behave like a lady and with style."

"It's clear to me that there's an appetite for real radical change."

"People feel like they must present a certain way to check off a box based on where they are, who they are in their life."

"Andrew Tate comes along and says like, 'I'm the masculine alpha male, yo, don't let women control you,' but now you're going to literally harm your own mental well-being, raise your risk of pride and depression for a girl? That sounds like some major simp behavior right there."

"I think that there's a lot of rigid expectations on men. I think that men are feeling very... I think that men feel that they don't have a good community or a good place right now."

"By disneyfying ourselves, we become exactly what we need to be to become happy."

"It's so sad. It also though highlights to me what I think weddings are to a lot of people, which is just all about the perception."

"When you're 20, you're worried about what everyone's thinking about you. When you're 30, you stop caring what people think about you. When you're 40, you realize people were not thinking about you."

"You know the message you’re sending out with those sweatpants? You’re telling the world, I give up, I can’t compete in a normal society, I’m miserable so I might as well be comfortable."

"What is stopping you from being your true authentic self? Why are you dimming your light to fit in with other people?"

"The honorifics, the pursuit of the maximum virtue that you can achieve in society, will only be hindered by spitting out more children."

"What has happened to the old on the side of the New York City Cop car, protect and serve? Seems like a pretty simple, straightforward idea for policing."

"In today's age, people aspire to something more than to just give birth."

"You cannot pump a population ignorant of the ideas that founded our nation and expect it to keep it at all."

"I believe up to 30 percent of adults who now are effectively living lives without children would have planned to have them."

"Isn't it the dream of all trans people to transition, pass as a cisgender bio King, and die an unmarthered, quiet death?"

"If you're confident and you know who you are, it doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter to anyone else."

"It alleviates it because it provides what women want biologically. They want marriage, they want a long-term committed partner, they want children."

"You would be astonished how much the image of masculine power and success is a source of weakness rather than strength for guys."

"As someone who grew up on the butt end of the millennial generation and the front end of Gen Z, like some weird technologically advanced human centipede, I know firsthand how annoying it can be to hear someone older than you try to push their moral code and societal expectations onto you."

"Take it as a metaphor for your own life: you shouldn't be doing something you really feel suffocated doing, even if everybody else wants you to do it."

"Not everybody's path is the same. Please stop asking people when they're going to get married or when they're going to have kids."

"Those who are able to work and refuse the opportunity should not expect society's support."

"Being a straight guy, then you loving women should be like a default."

"The primary expectation of queens and other well-born women of the past was to have as many children as possible to secure their husband's dynasty."

"Imagine being like a dude-bro, like a regular guy, having your best friends, another dude-bro guy, and you've known each other for years and years, and you both can't even have a basic emotional conversation about how much the other person means to each other."

"Who cares if you aren't doing it the way people want you to if it makes you happy then that's what's important."

"I'll stop being afraid of men when they stop thinking they need to be men. Be your own person."

"Men are expected, societally, to work hard, to not complain about their status."

"Ideally, we are selecting each other for more than just optimal male achievement and optimal female youth and beauty."

"Success is coded masculine by a society that elevates men as 'bread-winners' and ties one's success to one's masculinity."

"There are real costs to being you. But what's more important to you? Is it more important for you to be self-expressive, to really be yourself, to be fulfilled inside, or to continue seeking shallow external validation?"

"There's no book that says by 30 you gotta get your stuff together. There's no book that says you gotta be married by 30, babies by 30. You're on your own journey, so never forget that."

"There's nothing uglier than an immodest bride who leaves nothing to the imagination."

"You were created to soar, to live life to the fullest, to push the limits no matter what society expects of you."

"Despite men desiring similar emotional intimacy from their friendships, they are less likely to actually achieve this intimacy due to fears of appearing feminine or gay."

"I was losing interest in things which other people were so invested in... Then I realized I didn't come here to fit in, I came here to stand out."

"Christians will hate it if you don't sell the narrative that Judeo-Christian values is the reason for everything good in this world."

"The most important thing you can do if you want to reach your potential, be happy, avoid mental health issues, avoid midlife crises, is to turn up the internal dial and just try and get that other dial, which is society's voice, right down to zero."

"We reject a life that's actually worth living because we've deluded ourselves into believing that the unwatched life is meaningless."

"One of their number one regrets is that they didn't live their life in a way that was true to them but in a way that other people expected of them."

"The very things that are an intricate part of being woman, being nurturing mothers and wives, are taken when we believe the lie that we have to make something of ourselves."

"It's fascinating, isn't it, that when you're young, you're forced to fit in, and then as you get older, it's all about how do you stand out."

"Instead of moving to change ourselves to better fit what society's expectations of us are, the trans community needs to practice what they preach and talk about self-love and self-acceptance."

"You are feeling the way you're feeling because you are a Chanel bag being sold on a Walmart shelf."

"What exactly is black enough for black people?"

"It's ironic because you'd think the purpose of creating industrial civilization and technology would be that we can take it easy, but it's almost like some strange trip that's been foisted upon us."

"I think society pushes women to work with feminism. They say, go get your bag. It's like, but you know, I think it's unfair for women is that we're pushed to do both."

"Biological sex is always going to be a category we have to deal with, you know, for the foreseeable future at least. What I'm against is the idea that some arbitrary hormone washes you received while in the womb should decide a massive category of expectations and behaviors that are assigned to you afterwards."

"We have never had more expectations of love and work than we do today."

"Performing masculinity in a specific way means they will attain a level of status and respect and possibly even desirability. This is the bar that men and boys are sold when we're very little."

"We have so many people out here who feel like they're not enough because the world tells them they're not."

"You are more than your body and the world tends to forget that sometimes."

"I don't think that's too wild. I think honestly, if it was my personal opinion injected into it, people would wait a lot longer or never have it done."

"I think we're all bad moms, and you know why? Because being a mom today is impossible."

"People don't want you to be stressed or sad. They want you to say your life is perfect, but it's not."

"They say we're entitled and lazy. They tell us to go to college, get a job, retire at 65. How is that working out for us?"

"The unwritten expectations on being a man are a big part of how our lives are shaped. For some, it works out fine. For others, it's a disaster."

"Putting youth achievement on a pedestal takes a mental toll on everyone, from older generations to young people who feel like we haven't done enough."

"The adult world with its rules and social pressures and expectations is so immersive that we forget that there is an outside world at all."

"Change shouldn't be like a performance. It's not something that I need to show everyone like, 'Hey guys, I've changed. I'm good now, right?' It's not for you."

"The focus on an outward appearance of perfection and success, a drive to amass financial wealth as evidence of spiritual righteousness and the relatively lax regulation in Utah combine to form a pretty powerful atmosphere."

"Nobody should be put in the position to take care of a child they did not commit to."

"The common mistake that most people make is to aim for a version of success that is not your own."

"Don't lower your standards just because everybody else in the world doesn't believe in or can't afford you."

"I was 31 when I had my first child, and the world frowned on me. Really, why? That's so weird."

"The feminist movement was supposed to empower women and give them choices, but now a lot of women that choose to be stay-at-home moms or wives or caregivers are shamed because of it."

"These guys are paid millions of dollars, all these influencers, all these NBA players, all these professional athletes, they're paid millions of dollars to be narrative gatekeepers."

"A lot of what we do and want to do is heavily affected by what roles we're taught are acceptable for the groups of people we belong in."

"It's become almost taboo to say, 'I'd love to be just a stay-at-home mom and take care of my kids.'"

"Black women should not have to lower their expectations or their value based on something that we cannot control."

"It's my goal to widen everybody's range of normalcy."

"Forget the imaginary deadlines and do what makes you feel like an adult."

"I really want women to exist for purpose the same way that a man does, instead of for purchase."

"The idea that we should all be financial experts is a crazy idea."

"If you aren't married, you will be urged to get married. If you are married, you'll be urged to have children."

"Masking is when you try and suppress your natural state of being and your symptoms so that you can fit in."

"We are not looking for a new national identity; we just need government as good as our people."

"If the biological bar has not gone down in terms of our capacity as a species in this short period of time, perhaps the societal bar has gone up in terms of what we expect of children."

"Being normal is difficult. Our natural way of being is to do things in a certain way and to conform that to society and what we're expected to do is often really challenging slash impossible."

"You don't need to please society, you don't need to please the world."

"Give yourself permission to manifest whatever it is that you truly want without worrying about what people will think."

"My mom always taught me to be very proper, private, and to always portray that everything was perfect."

"It's less so about burning the streamer world down and more so about burning down this glamorized, idolized idea that people have of being a streamer."

"Millennials aren't not having kids or buying homes or saving for retirement because they're just lazy and entitled and love avocado toast."

"What women want is not necessarily handbags and cocaine and high heels...they want something else. They want a depth of connection, they want to be listened to, they want to feel special."

"For women, at least here in the US, it's expected. Both are naturally occurring, but one is considered gross because it's on a woman's body."

"Being a woman is just a war forever, especially being a young woman in the public eye. It's really unfair."

"They are the ones who write the rules and pass the laws that we're supposed to follow, but sometimes they don't follow the same rules."

"We all have been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't."

"What does it mean to be a man? A man is somebody who is a provider, a protector, strong, independent, confident, leaders, warriors."

"Wanting the government to make people's lives better is statism 101."

"She doesn't conform to the role that society expects of her."

"No one is perfect, and the problem is what this actually leads to is this really perverse incentive structure where your best move is not actually to apologize for the stuff you do wrong."

"Men struggling don't want to be lectured about the patriarchy; they don't want to be told it's all their fault."

"The desire, the risk management act is decided like any law under a reasonable man; we are expecting that persons will act in a way to protect themselves and others."

"How are you within yourself is important. What you wear may be socially important, what you drive may be important somewhere else, but actually, there's only one thing important: How are you within yourself?"

"They expect the world to catch up to them, and I have no doubt that we will."

"Our lives shouldn't revolve around work. Both parents have to work in a two-family home, or if it's one parent, they're working multiple jobs. That's not a life."

"People have actually asked me to be more Pamela Anderson-like. Oh wow, I'm a real person."

"In order to be successful in life, you have to stop caring what people think."

"Every kid shouldn't have to go to college because the system now is making a college degree the new high school degree."

"Anytime a man has standards of a woman, it's considered toxic, insecure."

"We have the lowest expectations of our country that I've ever seen, ever in my study of history and contemporary life."

"The biggest scam in the world is living a crappy life where you're always broke, always poor, always under financial pressure. That's the real scam."

"The only thing he would talk about is how to give back what one has gained, and ever since that moment, I was like, look, the expression of even giving back doesn't make sense to me because it assumes that one took in the first place."

"Would you like me to be smaller, weaker, softer, taller? Would you like me to be quiet? Is my value based only on your perception, or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?"

"It is not women's fault that men behave like morons and like pigs."

"We're not going to stop growing in our lives just because it makes people feel uncomfortable."

"Governments have to be doing the job that we think we're electing them to do, which is just creating the conditions so we can live freely."

"The reality is that you have to stop caring what other people think of you."

"Give yourself the freedom of not caring what someone else thinks of you."

"Don't let society try to tell you what you should like because that is not fair. You are not society. You are you, period."

"You should be allowed to spend money without people getting upset at you."

"I don't want to reinforce stereotypes that make people feel like they can't move outside of some kind of box."

"And I think the great problem of growing up at the moment, particularly for young people, is that you're told that if you're not rich and famous, your life is not really worthwhile. And that is such pernicious crap."

"Our culture, for all its talk about tolerance and diversity, actually has very little tolerance for a diversity of personality types."

"Dying alone is actually better than putting up with this [stuff] from black men."

"Society feeds you this idea that you're not gonna find love, and that is so not true."

"You're either too much or you're not enough, and it's like there's no middle ground that's allowed for us that I think is allowed for others."

"Women should not be confined to healing or teaching professions, nor men to ones requiring brute strength or raw ambition."

"To whom much has been given, much is required."

"Society puts different demands on men and women and different expectations, and different rewards."

"Your value as a human being should be about who you are as a person, not ticking off certain boxes."

"Women are still accepted by society for being lazy, whereas a lazy man... ain't gonna get nothing."

"Women shouldn't feel pressured to look like a movie star every time they leave the house, and men shouldn't expect to see women in their real life that look like that."

"People always tell you, like, be yourself and you'll be fine, but when people tell you that, you're always gonna think, 'Ah, I should be myself,' and then people are gonna try to be what they think they should be, but it doesn't work that way."

"The worst part about having a mental illness is that people expect you to behave as if you don't."

"We live in a society where, if you're not successful by a certain age, you're seen as a failure, but that's not true."

"It's mind-blowing that she would not take responsibility at this point, isn't it?"

"You think everyone's watching you, everyone's gonna wonder if I'm gonna do this or that. Actually, no one really cares."

"Convicting women to give up femininity was one of the biggest tricks they pulled on females."

"There's an awful lot of things that we're expected to believe, and certainly a lot of things we're expected to say, which basically, people don't believe."

"Instruct the children not to dream of toys or sweets. Instruct them to dream of infrastructure."

"Do what you want to do, screw what people think, as long as you're not bringing people down or hurting other people, and you're only focusing on spreading good vibes."

"I feel like society just thinks that a 23-year-old should have their whole life mapped out at this point, and I don't agree with that."

"I think it's such an invasive question to ask a woman, 'Do you want kids? Do you plan on having kids?' because not only is it their choice...but also you don't know what struggles they've potentially been going through."

"We are allowed to create this incredible life for ourselves, fuck what other people think."

"You're not supposed to have anything at 24. You're supposed to struggle."

"God's version of a successful and beautiful woman is actually totally opposite, totally countercultural to what we see out in the world."

"You can't just be because I'm black, you can do it... You still got to stay out of trouble, you still got to have an education."

"Women want traditional men but they themselves are not traditional."

"By knowing more, we would care more, we would want to do more good, and the light of Reason would shine in previously dark places. It hasn't quite happened that way."

"Life really does begin when you stop caring what people think."

"If the only way men conceive and see masculinity being discussed nationally is 'you are emotionally repressed, you don't talk about your feelings,' and then on the other hand you've got this guy who basically says to you, 'get your shit together, start working out, start working hard,' you hear that and you go, 'Oh, actually that's like an active expression of something I can do to improve myself.'"

"I finally realized why people don't like us... They put all the energy for us to lose."

"Everyone wants a quick and cheap solution to an extremely complicated and layered social problem that is juvenile delinquency."

"The hardest part of being a woman is figuring out what to wear."

"Our children are counting on us, even if they don't know it."

"Guys are just like regular looking women are fine."

"Here's to setting ourselves free, free from labels, free from needing the approval of others, free from worrying what others think about us."

"Women have all the benefits without having any of the downsides."

"I think our niceties are much more about us."

"I want to see more men be the head of the household and step up you know in all aspects, don't just step up when it's time to [ __ ]"

"It's funny because you just never see that, like, if Graham were to say something like that, you would be ousted."

"It's just ridiculous whereas men were just required to be in the house and have a job."

"That's what I don't like when is somebody black, oh you all know what to do."

"I understand why we need an explanation, but it annoys me. I want the world to make a collective pact: if there's a line of more than five minutes for anything, that thing's not worth doing."

"Statistically... I don't think that women go in like with like the women's not going to go in to have uh you know to get married just so she can go take this guy to this to the cleaners."

"The kids are not all right. You know what Gen Z is worried about? Not being able to enjoy the fruits of a successful society on the same time frame that maybe the rest of us have."

"I love the lie in the movie: 'We're a generation of men raised by women.' I'm starting to wonder if another woman is exactly what we need."

"You could have grass-fed, free-range kids that only eat organic meals grown by the sun, someone will still have something to say."

"Like in the words of Marilyn Monroe and woman being pretty is like a man being rich."

"It became that thing that I just started to fixate on."

"Women want a traditional man but they don't want to be traditional girls."

"As men, we take the brunt of it because now we're being accused for it and also our business is going to suffer."

"I was thinking, dear God, don't let anybody down... you will appear ungrateful if you don't lose more weight."

"There is no such thing as eating like a man or eating like a lady."

"There is potent relatability to the premise of unhappy parents taking their innocent naive children oblivious to their struggles on a picturesque illusion of happily ever afters."

"You don’t need to listen to expectations of who you ought to be."

"It doesn't really make sense that you have to sacrifice so much just to raise your kids."

"It's so troubling, I mean, it's so troubling too from the moms..."

"Black men want black women to think they can't escape to someone better."

"Civilization demands certain responsibilities."

"When you put an artist on a pedestal, you're killing them. Break through that barrier."

"You couldn't just coast by on familial prestige, you actually had to, you know... DO something for it in ancient Rome."