The stigma that was once attached to things society deemed unhealthy served the purpose of making them undesirable. With the stigma gone many people see little reason not to do whatever feels good at the moment.

If anything needs to get fixed in society it's people's consumption of other people's problems.

I believe that writers unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite are at heart people who live by night a little bit outside society moving between delinquency and conformity.

Too much of our society looks for people to fail.

And nothing embittered me which is important because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action you know.

A social problem is one that concerns the way in which people live together in one society. A racial problem is a problem which confronts two different races who live in two separate societies even if those societies are side by side.

I think for the most part people are proud of the bicultural foundation New Zealand is built on and the fact that we are a multicultural society.

It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.

One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse.

Watching people just look out for themselves I think is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society how it operates and how that reflects their so-called betters.

Life and human society are the chief concern of Confucianism and through it the chief concern of the Chinese people.

Police in China can do whatever they want after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation no discussion except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want - not only you your whole family and all people like you.

I'm really not interested in other people's opinions because I think frankly most of those opinions are either misinformed and adding to this endless ball of hot air we have in our society where everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and sacred and what counts.

If we all say the same thing then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it I become singled out even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society people are giving up on protecting these values.

The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story whether in print orating writing it down or having people acting it out. That's why I'm always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers.

I mean Britain is a country of successful Muslim businesspeople teachers and educators journalists. So we have to say very strongly that the two million plus Muslims in Britain the vast bulk of them make a huge contribution to our society and they actually make it the vibrant society it is.

I think it's great that we have organisations like Greenpeace. In a pluralistic society we want to have people who point out all the problems that the Earth could encounter. But we need to understand that they are not presenting a full and rounded view.

In return society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.

There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see.

My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them and I can help them.

I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled how much the information they receive is restricted and warped until they step out of line that is and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles or control?

In this I-me society my job is to get people to buy into something bigger than themselves.

Terms like that 'Humane Society ' are devised with people like me in mind who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.