Bulgarians hate old people, said Ruslan Jordanov. I’m not kidding. In a recent survey, 58 percent of Bulgarians surveyed admitted to disliking the elderly, making them even more reviled than the Roma—quite a feat in Bulgaria. No wonder “nobody ever gets up to give them a seat on the tram.” Long ago, our society revered grandparents as fonts of wisdom. […]
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“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the […]
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“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” – Old Greek proverb
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“The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained.” – John Stuart Mill
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Britain treats its kids like pests, said Jenny McCarthy. We see them as frequently annoying and sometimes frightening. A recent survey found that nearly half of respondents agreed that children today were “feral” and “like animals.” How many times have we all seen a small child trying to ask her mother a question only to be told to “shut up” […]
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“In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued.” – Aung San Suu Kyi
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It was in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age that the modern concept of celebrity was born, said George Packer. But if the worship of gaudy wealth and fame began in The Great Gatsby era, we’ve taken it to new, “perverse” heights in 21st-century America. Today, celebrity demigods dominate every field: There are celebrity chefs, bankers, computer engineers, chief executives, hip-hop […]
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“For every one torturer, there are a thousand people ready to risk their lives to save another. For every soldier who shoots in a neighborhood, there are a thousand compañeros who help and protect each other.” – Isabel Allende
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