10 Douglas Coupland Quotes on Society

Douglas Coupland quotes on society

1. 'You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.'

22. You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you worry you are an interchangeable cog.

32. Technology does not always equal progress.

38. Compromise is said to be the way of the world and yet I find myself feeling sick trying to accept what it has done to me.

60. People like that woman make it clear just how asinine it is to believe that human beings have some kind of in-built universal sense of goodness. These days I think that everybody's just one spit away from being a mall bomber.

69. TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.

72. 'I have this theory about smart people. If you're smart, you're either the only person in your family who's smart, or everybody in the family is smart. No in-between.'

77. Ethan is annoyed with all of these dumb campaigns that indoctrinate millions of people into thinking they're tough-guy free spirits when, in fact, there's probably much to be said for following and, in any event, the food chain isn't structured to encompass millions of non-followers.

84. 'You have to admit, half the people who work here are mildly autistic; poor social skills, the ability to obsess on anything numerical or repetitive, the odd outfits, the paranoia and the sense of continually being judged and measured.'

92. It turns out that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony - which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value. I can't imagine anything worse than that. Okay, maybe I can, but imagine reading the morning newspaper and believing it all to be true on some level.