Quote

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
Society
Believed
Power
Condition
Always
Measure
Pillar
Average
Weakest
Conditions
Pillars
Strength
Carrying
Health
Bridge
Worst
Bridges

More quotes by Zygmunt Bauman

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It is more or less clear that one idea which should emerge from the crash, whatever happens with the attempts to save the banks from bankruptcy and people from being evicted from their homes, is that this kind of life is unsustainable. We cannot go on like this... something must be done.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Indeed, I did not truly belong to any school, order, intellectual camaraderie or clique I did not apply for admission to any of them, let alone did much to deserve an invitation nor would I be listed by any of them - at least listed unqualifiedly - as one of us.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Our bad luck is that our writing is linear, while we think circularly.
Zygmunt Bauman
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This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Throughout early modernity there were very strong pressures on Jews to assimilate. Assimilating meant cutting your ties with the community of origin.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Freedom is the slogan which speaks to the ears of people who feel strong enough to manage on their own using their own resources, who can do without dependency because they can do without others caring for them.
Zygmunt Bauman
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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.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Man is in his short sojourn on earth equal to God in His eternity.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Happiness needs one-upmanship.
Zygmunt Bauman
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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.
Zygmunt Bauman
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In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.
Zygmunt Bauman
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The question of identity has separated from the issue of 'assimilation', having lost much of its drama and become, so to speak, a secular problem.
Zygmunt Bauman
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What is happening now is that the number of people who are not strong enough or do not feel strong enough to decide to live without the security provided by the community or the state, is going up.
Zygmunt Bauman
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I worry about the Israeli moral standard, Israeli humanity.
Zygmunt Bauman
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As long as being a stranger and surrounded by strangers was seen as a temporary irritant, a smallest departure from the binding rules of conduct by a member of a minority, was taken for a major crime justifying deportation.
Zygmunt Bauman
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For intellectual authority, the appropriate version of Descartes 's cogito would be today: I am talked about, therefore I am.
Zygmunt Bauman
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The secret of every durable ... social system is the recasting of 'functional prerequisites' into behavioral motives for actors.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Every interpretation is but an introduction to another interpretation, and that is how Talmud pages are printed.
Zygmunt Bauman
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The planet is full and we will be rubbing shoulders forever. There is nowhere else to go.
Zygmunt Bauman
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We have a reversal of a longstanding trend, from rising inequality across nations and constant or declining inequality within nations, to declining inequality across nations and rising inequality within them.
Zygmunt Bauman