It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

We have an epidemic of insecure people in our society today.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‚least advanced‘ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Governance should be designed as an equalizer. Democrats are more inclined towards working families and those who are struggling for a better life.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

I think America has always been polarized.

Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

You notice how liberals keep saying, ‚If only Islam would have a Reformation‘ – it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

I think whenever something is – whenever there’s something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

In many ways, when you’re a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.