We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Everybody should have a fair deal; everybody should have the chance to life in this world. If we were evolved as human beings, we would hopefully be able to alleviate suffering in the world.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

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.

If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

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

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

Most of us believe, or should believe, that every child can learn, given the opportunity, but try substitute teaching just once and you will see firsthand the socioeconomic issues that distract our kids from taking advantage of that opportunity.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

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.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

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

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

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

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

I like working-class people, generally speaking.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

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

The society in ‚The Handmaid’s Tale‘ is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

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

It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

I live in a crazy time.

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.

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.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

For me, education has never been simply a policy issue – it’s personal. Neither of my parents and hardly anyone in the neighborhood where I grew up went to college. But thanks to a lot of hard work and plenty of financial aid, I had the opportunity to attend some of the finest universities in this country.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

We live in a bewildering world.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.