That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

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

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Society is at odds with itself.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

I’m very sensitive. I remember, as a kid at school, if someone in the classroom was sad or angry, it could have a great impact on me.

When you meet with someone and you try to assess whether they’re telling you the truth or not, there’s several things you can do. You judge demeanor and credibility. You look at corroboration.

There has to be a global mission of human progress.

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

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

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.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

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.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

It’s not a slam at you when people are rude, it’s a slam at the people they’ve met before.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

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

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

When you’re in prison, you want to know that you were thought about.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.