Society Quotes

Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.

Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence

El mundo habrá acabado de joderse -dijo entonces- el día en que los hombres viajen en primera clase y la literatura en el vagón de carga.

A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public to him are non-existent.

Democracy is an impossible thing until the power is shared by all, but let not democracy degenerate into mobocracy.

Legislation and adjudication must follow, and conform to, the progress of society.

Every one knows that there are no real forests in England.The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London alderman.

Things are in the saddle. And ride mankind.

The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.

Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things.

It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.

Let people return to making knots on ropes, instead of writing.

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.

In America, people are so busy. Even the children are busy. I get the impression very few of us are touching the miracle that you are alive.

The newspapers print what the people want, and thus does the savage still swing his club and flourish his spear.

People who make a living off other people's fortunes or misfortunes are parasites.

All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?

There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.

The safety of the people shall be the highest law.

O philosophy, life's guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.[Lat., O vitae philosophia dux! O virtutis indagatrix, expultrixque vitiorum! Quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita hominum sine et esse potuisset? Tu urbes peperisti; tu dissipatos homines in societatum vitae convocasti.]

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are ... punished by fear.

Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, culture corrects the theory of success.

Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your reputation. Be not apt to relate news, if you know not the truth thereof. Speak no evil of the absent, for it is unjust. Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise. There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth, and pursue it steadily. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy nation.

For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.

On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days.... Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate.

We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?

A good neighbor sometimes cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.

The prettiest people do the ugliest things.

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.

The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for ... the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.

Civilization is the intelligent management of human emotions.

However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free.

We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.

The great need of the world has always been for leaders. With more leaders we could have more industry. More industry, more employment and comfort for all.

One day I'm gonna bust, blow up on this society, why did you lie to me, I couldn't find a trace of humanity.

Our efforts to counter hatred, intolerance, and indifference must continue simultaneously at individual and structural levels. We must try to influence for good the minds and hearts of individual people through dialogue and confidence building. These efforts must be reinforced by our efforts to create just structures in society to support the ongoing work of negotiations in the human community. Only then will we have a chance to negate the terrible consequences of the tremendous conflicts facing humankind today.

Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe's spiritual and social order... catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society.

There is no class of people so hard to manage in a state, as those whose intentions are honest, but whose consciences are bewitched.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual ... who ... can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government.

The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.

Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation.

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.

Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.

If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y

I think that we must face the fact that in reality, you cannot have economic and political equality without having some form of social equality. I think this is inevitable.

Culture is - it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And in present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment.

It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.

Men are climbing to the moon, but they don’t seem interested in the beating human heart.

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

It can be said that there are four basic and primary things that the mass of people in a society wish for: to live in a safe environment, to be able to work and provide for themselves, to have access to good public health and to have sound educational opportunities for their children.

Children need to get a high-quality education, avoid violence and the criminal-justice system, and gain jobs. But they deserve more. We want them to learn not only reading and math but fairness, caring, self-respect, family commitment, and civic duty.

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

If the minority, and a small one too, is suffered to dictate to the majority, after measures have undergone the most solemn discussions by the representatives of the people, and their will through this medium is enacted into a law, there can be no security for life, liberty, or property; nor, if the laws are not to govern, can any man know how to conduct himself in safety.

A Nation's character is typified by its dancers.

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.