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The carrying power of a bridge is not the average strength of the pillars, but the strength of the weakest pillar. I have always believed that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP but by the condition of its worst off.

Zygmunt Bauman

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Zygmunt Bauman
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 19
Died: 2017
Died: January 9
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Poznan
Worst
Bridges
Society
Believed
Power
Condition
Always
Measure
Pillar
Average
Weakest
Conditions
Pillars
Strength
Carrying
Health
Bridge

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The visual does seem to me the most thoroughly grasped and recorded among my impressions sight seems to be my principal sense organ, and seeing supplies the key metaphors for reporting the perception.
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I think that the essential instruction of the Bible is very much topical. The sole problem is that with every change of historical setting, you need to readjust the interpretation of the message.
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Community is like a big family.
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Once upon a time there were the Pampas in Argentina, that people could treat as empty lands and where they could run away from their problems from problem-ridden homes. That eventuality is no longer available.
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Where we hope to land (and where we do land, though only for a fleeting moment, enough for tired wings to catch the wind anew) is a 'there' which we thought of little and knew of even less.
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An ideal and flawless freedom, complete freedom, enabling without disabling, is I believe an oxymoron in metaphysics as much as it is an unreachable goal in social life.
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I worry about the Israeli moral standard, Israeli humanity.
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In Montreal, where I taught in 1970, I met many people. The only ones who said to me they were Canadians, were Jews. All the rest were Scotts, Irish, English, French, Swedes.
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Freedom without security portends chaos, perpetual anxiety and fear. Security without freedom means slavery. So, each on its own is awful only together they make for a good life. But, a big but: being both necessary, complementing each other, they are nevertheless virtually incompatible.
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The secret of every durable ... social system is the recasting of 'functional prerequisites' into behavioral motives for actors.
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Relationships, like cars, should undergo regular services to make sure they are still roadworthy.
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There are other ways of finding satisfaction, recipes for human happiness, enjoyment, dignified and meaningful, gratifying life, than increased consumption that increases production.
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As to describing me as an outsider throughout, and an outsider through and through - I have no reason to disagree.
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It is so true that in liquid modernity freedom was, so to speak, let off the leash, and for a quite a number of years the freedom of choice was in principle unlimited. One result was the weakening of inter-human bonds, particularly inherited bonds, and the counterfactual assumption that individuals must and can fend for themselves.
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In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again.
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As far as love is concerned, possession, power, fusion and disenchantment are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
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This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside.
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What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past, you who enter the world of fluid modernity.
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It is easy now to break the vows. It is even easier to part your ways if vows haven't been taken.
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Once upon a time, when I was young, people saw a wedding as an event that determined the rest of their life. For a rising number of people today, it is quite normal to try and err, marry, divorce, marry again.
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