Quote

You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest

Zygmunt Bauman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Zygmunt Bauman
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 19
Died: 2017
Died: January 9
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Poznan
Weakest
Decency
Judge
Judging
Society
Living

More quotes by Zygmunt Bauman

Image
Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Christ could not create a codified 'Christian ethics' such a thing would be a contradiction in terms.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Now people are worried not about the prospects of buying new things, but about how to pay for the things they bought yesterday, a year ago or years before. It is, as Americans like to say, a wholly different kind of ball-game.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
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.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Why do I write books? Why do I think? Why should I be passionate? Because things could be different, they could be made better.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
We are always confronted with choice.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Human attention tends to be focused on the satisfactions relationships are hoped to bring, precisely because somehow they have not been truly satisfactory. And if they do satisfy, the price of this satisfaction has often been found to be unacceptable.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
The task is to keep the lost opportunities of the past alive.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Freedom without security portends chaos, perpetual anxiety and fear.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
The planet is full and we will be rubbing shoulders forever. There is nowhere else to go.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
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.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
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
Image
We are already and will remain all in the same boat.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Fully biodegradable structures are nowadays the ideal and the standards to which most, if not all structures, struggle to measure up.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
You are a stranger, I am a stranger, we all remain strangers, and nevertheless we can like or even love each other.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Cornelius Castoriadis, the great French social philosopher of Greek origin, was asked once by an exasperated interviewer: What do you want, Mr. Castoriadis - to change humanity? He answered: No, God forbid, I only want humanity to change itself, as it has done so many times in the past. I would be inclined to answer the same way.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
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.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
As to describing me as an outsider throughout, and an outsider through and through - I have no reason to disagree.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
As the run-by-capital society of producers turned since into the run-by-capital society of consumers, I would say that the main, indeed meta, function of the governments has become now to assure that it is the meetings between commodities and the consumers, and credit issuers and the borrowers, that regularly take place.
Zygmunt Bauman