Society Quotes

In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.

Charles de Montesquieu

My purpose in life does not include a hankering to charm society.

James Dean

I knew from the start if I left a woman I really loved - - The Great Society - - In order to fight that bitch of a war in Vietnam then I would lose everything at home. My hopes my dreams.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

Henry Van Dyke

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

Pope John Paul II

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

Eric Hoffe

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

James Russell Lowell

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

Thomas Jefferson

Individual commitment to a group effort, that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Vince Lombardi

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

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

Robertson Davies

The function of government ought to be: make sure you have good water to drink, somebody picking up the garbage, good roads to drive on, enough electricity to turn your light bulbs and your record player on, and whatever smaller amounts of regulatory assistance is necessary to make this society work.

Frank Zappa, Interview with this submitter, New York City, 5/08/1980

Educate your children to self - Control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.

Benjamin Franklin

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)

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Mark Twain

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

Edmund Burke

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

Lyndon B. Johnson

Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.

Oscar Wilde

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals of American society.

Robert Francis Kennedy

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

Henry David Thoreau

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

I believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Since periods of change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world.

The Dalai Lama, 1992 Speech

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John W. Gardne

Let... others call me a hypocrite because I fired a gun in a moment of personal peril. I shall still be for strict gun control. But as long as authorities leave this society awash in drugs and guns, I will protect my family.

Carl T. Rowan, Jr.

It is the first step of wisdom to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the society in which they occur.

George Whitehead

I greet you as the shapers of American society.

Lyndon B. Johnson