Quotes about society

"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."

Abbey, Edward on society
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"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."

Acton, Lord on society
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"American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it."

Adams, Henry Brooks on society   

"The happiness of society is the end of government."

Adams, John on society
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"Society lives by faith, and develops by science."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on society   

"Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous."

Aristotle on society   

"Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden."

Baldwin, James on society   

"Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable."

Beauvoir, Simone De on society   

"I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself."

Bronte, Emily on society   

"Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Burke, Edmund on society   

"Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored."

Byron, Lord on society
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"We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named fair competition and so forth, it is a mutual hostility."

Carlyle, Thomas on society   

"Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners."

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De on society   

"Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn."

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De on society   

"We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically determined perceptions and human social needs. For historical reasons, existing societies might have such properties, leading to various forms of pathology."

Chomsky, Noam on society   

"The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation."

Custine, Marquis De on society   

"You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches."

DeFord, Frank on society   

"Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but is subject to that of society."

Durkheim, Emile on society   

"Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on society   

"Society is a hospital of incurables."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on society   

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"Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on society   

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on society   

"Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on society
4 fans of this quote   

"It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression."

Freud, Sigmund on society   

"To be social is to be forgiving."

Frost, Robert on society
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"Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being."

Gandhi, Mahatma on society
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"Compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force in fighting among themselves, or in pulling in different directions."

George, Henry on society   

"If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through."

Hayakawa, S. I. on society   

"Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives."

Hoffer, Eric on society   

"Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on society   

"Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander."

Hugo, Victor on society   

"The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom -- these are the pillars of society."

Ibsen, Henrik on society   

"Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next."

Inge, Dean William R. on society   

"No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa."

Ionesco, Eugene on society   

"The great society is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goods than with the quantity of their goods."

Johnson, Lyndon B. on society   

"What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?"

Kupcinet, Irv on society
3 fans of this quote   

"Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly as he thinks."

Lin Yu-tang on society   

"The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being -- which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs -- where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error."

Lippmann, Walter on society   

"A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife."

Macaulay, Thomas B. on society   

"Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand."

Marx, Karl on society