The slugs are ascending this steep city staircase that leads up to a huge Catholic church, essentially signifying their slow crawl towards death. The work reminds us of religion, mortality, natural decay, and the slow suffocation of commercialized societies.
My interest in secret societies is the product of many experiences, some I can discuss, others I cannot.
We cannot give our students all that they expect, whether by way of the quality of their schooling or by way of the jobs that they were hoping to get. Student frustration is a worldwide phenomenon, pushing our societies into adjusting faster than they are used to.
Evil societies always kill their consciences.
Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
Education enables people and societies to be what they can be.
There's a reason that all societies and cultures and small bands of humans engage in myth-making. Fundamentally, it is to help us understand ourselves.
Very few societies on Earth developed science as we know it today. On the other hand, the number is not zero - the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Maya did, among others. Once invented, science proved so useful that it spread like mold on a petri dish.
Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified.
You'll find individuals agreeing on this, but when they get into collective societies and larger groups they find it difficult to achieve group agreement.
Trade creates jobs and lifts people out of poverty. And when that happens, societies stabilize and grow. And there is nothing like a stable society to fight terrorism and strengthen democracy, freedom and rule of law.
Well we are hoping that the power of the community of free nations is such that our sovereignty our rights are not going to be challenged by anybody who's going try to undermine the freedom, the openness of our societies and our security.
In its current form, globalization cannot be sustained. Democratic societies will not support it. Authoritarian leaders will fear to impose it.
I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Schools connect children to their communities. Jobs connect adults to their societies. Persons with autism deserve to walk the same path.
Western governments have generally tried to contain genocide by appeasing its architects. But the sad record of the last century shows that the walls the United States tries to build around genocidal societies almost inevitably shatter.
Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings - stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility.
It is also, I would guess, a universal that in all societies people value respectability granted to them.
All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.
Our heroes are fighting to bring stability to the Middle East, and they have put pressure on all of the tyrannies of the Middle East. They have taken a stand against tyranny, against terrorists, and for the prospect of decent societies throughout that region.
I've benefited from the best of both societies and both cultures, East and West.
Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.
One of the most important secret societies of the 20th century is called the Round Table. It is based in Britain with branches across the world. It is the Round Table that ultimately orchestrates the network of the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim.
One of the problems we're facing is, in my view, that there are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies.
We increasingly live in societies based on the vocabulary of 'choice' and a denial of reality - a denial of massive inequality, social disparities, the irresponsible concentration of power in relatively few hands, and a growing machinery of social and civil death.
It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.
The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don't have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments.
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.
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
War does horrible things to human beings, to societies. It brings out the best, but most often the worst, in our human nature.
Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations.
There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism.
