A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes packaged cake mixes frozen dinners and instant cameras teach patience to its young?

My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale New York society woman best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book 'Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers' - this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford's wire hangers look like pool noodles.

The historic ascent of humanity taken as a whole may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature in society in man himself.

Thus anybody who follows this nature and gives way its states will be led into quarrels and conflicts and go against the conventions and rules of society and will end up a criminal.

We coin concepts and we use them to analyse and explain nature and society. But we seem to forget midway that these concepts are our own constructs and start equating them with reality.

We lament the speed of our society and the lack of depth and the nature of disposable information.

We can't blame children for occupying themselves with Facebook rather than playing in the mud. Our society doesn't put a priority on connecting with nature. In fact too often we tell them it's dirty and dangerous.

Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society and we can't get out of it if we would.

If a person is homosexual by nature - that is if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.