Society Quotes
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.Fyodor Dostoevsky
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.James Russell Lowell
A society like ours, which professes no one religion and has allowed all religions to decay, which indulges freedom to the point of license and individualism to the point of anarchy, needs all the support that responsible, cultivated homes can furnish. I hope your generation will provide a firmer shelter for civilized standards.Alan Simpson
They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.Kahil Gibran, Spirits Rebellious
Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.John Dewey
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.Greek Prove
We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.John Lah
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.Mignon McLaughlin
Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.Albert Einstein
In a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his way all the time and no one is right all the time.Richard M. Nixon
Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident - - The luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.Edward C. Banfield
The American male at the peak of his physical powers and appetites, driving 160 big white horses across the scenes of an increasingly open society, with weekend money in his pocket and with little prior exposure to trouble and tragedy, personifies an accident going to happen.John Sloan Dickey
To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina.George Stanley McGovern
A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange... Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.Aristotle, Politics
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, Politics
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive.Irv Kupcinet
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar I love not Man the less, but Nature more.George Gordon Byron
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 Fitzgerald Kennedy
The neurotic and the artist - Since both live out the unconscious of the race - Reveal to us what is going to emerge endemically in the society later on.Rollo May
Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without.John Stuart Mill
The parent who gets down on the floor to play with a child on Christmas Day is usually doing a most remarkable thing - - Something seldom repeated during the rest of the year. These are, after all, busy parents committed to their work or their success in the larger society, and they do not have much left - Over time in which to play with their children.Brian Sutton - Smith
The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.Thomas Paine, in his "The Rights of Man" (1791)
There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.A Bartlett Giamatti
Dreams can become a reality when we possess a vision that is characterized by the willingness to work hard, a desire for excellence and a belief in our right and our responsibility to be equal members of society.Janet Jackson
Religion... is the basis and foundation of government... before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.James Madison
I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society.Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve
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
A man of a right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views, but is greatly interested and concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, and particularly of the city or village in which he resides, and for the true welfare of the society of which he is a member.Johathan Edwards
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.John F Kennedy
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.W. H. Auden
The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.A. J. Liebling
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
A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.Richard Hofstadte
America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.Peter Kropotkin
Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.Howard Mumford Jones
A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbors.William Ralph Inge
