society quotes

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

There has to be a global mission of human progress.

People love conspiracy theories.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

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

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

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.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

The ‚public‘ scares me, but people I trust.

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

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

Everybody is entertained to death.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

The environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.

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.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

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.

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.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

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.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

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

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what’s happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don’t seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

The middle class is so funny, it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

I think America has always been polarized.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

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?