society
Quotations
Quotations on the topic of ‘society’ from all listed authors (click on the ‘click to view listing’ links to view each quote in full).
-
“No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.” -John Ruskin
-
“What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.” -Colin Powell
-
“In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.” -Neil Armstrong
-
“The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another’s defects, and the bearing of one another’s burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions, and in society.” -Lawrence G. Lovasik
-
“The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.” -E. M. Forster
-
“Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.” -James Russell Lowell
-
“We need to shift from an economic organizing principle for human civilization, to a humanitarian organizing principle. Making money more important than your own children is a pathological way for an individual to run their affairs, and it’s a pathological way for a society to run its affairs.” -Marianne Williamson
-
“I’m also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage – which no previous society has ever believed.” -Alain de Botton
-
“I’m not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.” -Richard Dawkins
-
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.” -Edward Bernays
-
“Men of genius are often dull and inert in society as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
-
“Let him who expects one class of society to prosper in the highest degree, while the other is in distress, try whether one side of the face can smile while the other is pinched.” -Thomas Fuller
-
“Hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape.” -Busta Rhymes
-
“There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream. They’d be dead in two weeks.” -William S. Burroughs
-
“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
-
“That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.” -Charles Dickens
-
“Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.” -Honore de Balzac
-
“Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.” -Morihei Ueshiba
-
“A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.” -William Ralph Inge
-
“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.” -Mignon McLaughlin
-
“It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.” -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
-
“Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.” -Samuel Johnson
-
“The little things, I can obey. But the big things – how we think, what we value – those you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone – or any society – determine those for you.” -Morrie Schwartz
-
“The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.” -Karl Marx
-
“Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.” -Edmund Burke
-
“Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.” -Thomas Sowell
-
“Land: A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.” -Ambrose Bierce
-
“Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.” -Pearl S. Buck
-
“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.” -James A. Baldwin
-
“Girls are the future mothers of our society, and it is important that we focus on their well-being.” -Miriam Makeba
-
“A good person can make another person good it means that goodness will elicit goodness in the society other persons will also be good.” -Bhumibol Adulyadej
-
“Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed?” -Milton Friedman
-
“If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.” -Benjamin Disraeli
-
“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” -Rollo May
-
“There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.” -Francois de La Rochefoucauld
-
-
“Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.” -Jim Carrey
-
“Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society.” -Pope John Paul II
-
“When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.” -Isaac Asimov
-
“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.” -Billy Graham
-
“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.” -Salvador Dali
-
“I think people are born bisexual and the make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I’m also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who is bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that…
-
“In a capitalist society, persons who create capital, like Michael Eisner, are given the staggering rewards.” -Carroll O’Connor
-
“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.” -Vladimir Lenin
-
“The family is the first essential cell of human society.” -Pope John XXIII
-
“Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society.” -Hubert H. Humphrey
-
“I was in civil society long before I was ever in politics or my husband was ever even elected president.” -Hillary Clinton
-
“We are all murderers and prostitutes – no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.” -R. D. Laing
-
“If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.” -Howard Zinn
-
“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” -Brian Tracy
-
“The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.” -Bertrand Russell
-
“Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.” -Thomas Paine
-
“The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.” -Ron Paul
-
“I feel bad about my outlook, how I feel about people and society, and that I’ll never be part of society the way I should.” -Mike Tyson
-
“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.” -Victor Hugo
-
“A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.” -Bill Gates
-
“I will spend the next four years rebuilding the foundation of a opportunity society led by free people and free enterprises.” -Mitt Romney
-
“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti
-
“When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.” -Carl Sandburg
-
“Law represents the effort of man to organize society governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.” -Henry Ward Beecher
-
“Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.” -Sigmund Freud
-
“Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in society. It is a goal and an essential part of my life – a kind of destiny. Whoever is in distress can call on me. I will come running wherever they are.” -Princess Diana
-
“I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.” -Brendan Behan
-
“I think the first duty of society is justice.” -Alexander Hamilton
-
“We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.” -Margaret Mead
-
“Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.” -Clint Eastwood
-
-
“There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.” -Margaret Thatcher
-
“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” -Gilbert K. Chesterton
-
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” -Ernst Fischer
-
“I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.” -Joel Osteen
-
“I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.” -John Wooden
-
“A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.” -H. L. Mencken
-
“Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.” -Niccolo Machiavelli
-
“We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt
-
“Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.” -Jack Kingston
-
“Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.” -Edward Abbey
-
“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.” -Ayn Rand
-
“I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.” -Erma Bombeck
-
“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.” -Warren Buffett
-
“One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
-
“Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.” -John Adams
-
“We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.” -Marilyn Manson
-
“Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.” -Robert Kennedy
-
“A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.” -Robert A. Heinlein
-
“In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.” -Lee Iacocca
-
“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” -Daniel Patrick Moynihan
-
“I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.” -Nelson Mandela
-
“If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.” -Robert Frost
-
“In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.” -Henry David Thoreau
-
“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.” -Harry S. Truman
-
“Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.” -Jim Rohn
-
“I come from that society and there is a common thread, specifically family values – the idea that you do anything for your family, and the unconditional love for one’s children.” -Ednita Nazario
-
“Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?” -Erich Fromm
-
“All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.” -Paulo Coelho
-
“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.” -Albert Camus
-
“A healthy democracy requires a decent society it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.” -Charles W. Pickering
-
“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?” -John Lennon
-
“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.” -John F. Kennedy
-
“Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.” -Mahatma Gandhi
-
“I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.” -Oscar Wilde
-
“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” -Theodore Roosevelt
-
“I’m 23 years old. I might just be my mother’s child, but in all reality, I’m everybody’s child. Nobody raised me I was raised in this society.” -Tupac Shakur
-
“In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.” -Aristotle
-
“I don’t know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood, important people can’t stand to be invited someplace that isn’t full of other important people. They don’t mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners.” -Marilyn Monroe
-
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” -Carl Sagan
-
“It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
-
“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” -Albert Einstein
-
“If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.” -Zig Ziglar
-
“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.” -P. J. O’Rourke
-
“The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.” -Mark Twain
-
“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” -Hunter S. Thompson
-
“Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.” -Thomas Jefferson
-
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” -Frederick Douglass
-
“You can’t make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you’re doing is recording it.” -Art Buchwald
-
“Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society.” -Jack Kingston
-
“The key to organizing an alternative society is to organize people around what they can do, and more importantly, what they want to do.” -Abbie Hoffman
-
“People are going to behave however the social norms permit, and beyond that.” -Max Cannon
-
“Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.” -Randolph Bourne
-
“Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.” -Valerie Solanas
-
“In our society leaving baby with Daddy is just one step above leaving the kids to be raised by wolves or apes.” -Al Roker
-
“It is good for society to have this introspection.” -Jacques Verges
-
“Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.” -Herb Caen
-
“Normal social behavior requires that we be able to recognize identities in spite of change. Unless we can do so, there can be no human society as we know it.” -Kenneth L. Pike
-
“Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.” -Russell Baker
-
“What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?” -Irv Kupcinet
-
“Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in.” -Peter Medawar
-
“The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.” -A. J. Liebling
-
“Society is based on the assumption that everyone is alike and no one is alive.” -Hugh Kingsmill
-
“Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.” -Alfred Austin
-
“Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.” -Charles de Secondat
-
“Women with money and women in power are two uncomfortable ideas in our society.” -Candace Bushnell
-
“I think this society suffers so much from too much freedom, too many rights that allow people to be irresponsible.” -Boyd Rice
-
“Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.” -Georg C. Lichtenberg
-
“Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.” -Charles Horton Cooley
-
“Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury.” -Martha Beck
-
“Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.” -Bill Vaughan
-
“The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.” -Daniel Webster
-
“How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?” -Paul Sweeney
-
-
“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.” -Thomas Szasz
-
“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” -C. Wright Mills
-
“I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest.” -A. Whitney Brown
-
“A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.” -James Madison
-
“Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.” -Timothy Leary
-
“The human race’s prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.” -Arnold J. Toynbee
-
“The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.” -Adlai E. Stevenson
-
“The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.” -Jean de la Bruyere
-
“You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.” -Charles Kuralt
-
“One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we’ll need a new definition.” -Alvin Toffler
-
“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.” -Erich Fromm
-
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” -Adam Smith
-
“Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.” -John W. Gardner
-
“We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society.” -Hillary Clinton
-
“Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.” -George Orwell
-
“Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.” -Mignon McLaughlin
-
“In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.” -Carl Sandburg
-
“The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.” -Orson Welles
-
“Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.” -Robert Orben
-
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” -Mahatma Gandhi
-
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
-
“Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.” -George Bernard Shaw
-
“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” -Henry David Thoreau
-
“We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.” -Milton Friedman
-
“Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.” -Robert Frost
-
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” -James A. Baldwin
-
“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” -Lily Tomlin
-
“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” -Robert A. Heinlein
-
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti
-
“The U.K. needs a system for family migration underpinned by three simple principles. One: that those who come here should do so on the basis of a genuine relationship. Two: that migrants should be able to pay their way. And three: that they are able to integrate into British society.” -Theresa May
View More Quotations – By Author.
View More Quotations – By Topic.
Home.