Society Quotes

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

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 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

Bias against the Negro is the worst disease from which the society of our nation suffers.

Albert Einstein

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

Irv Kupcinet

Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow.

Arthur Stringer, "The Silver Poppy".

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.

Brian Aldiss

Bourgeois society is infected by monomania the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.

Simone Weil

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 degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Deceivers are the most dangerous members of society. They trifle with the best affections of our nature, and violate the most sacred obligations.

George Crabbe

I greet you as the shapers of American society.

Lyndon B. Johnson

We live in a vastly complex society which has been able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to suspect we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty.

Euell Gibbons

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.

Jean Cocteau, Journey to Freedom (1969)

Some people surrender their freedom willingly but others are forced to surrender it. Imprisonment begins with birth. Society, parents they refuse to allow you to keep the freedom you were born with. There are subtle ways to punish a person for daring to feel. You see that everyone around you has destroyed his true feeling nature. You imitate what you see.

Jim Morrison

A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neither.

Milton Friedman

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

Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings.

Jimmy Carte

I have no mercy or compassion for a society that crushes people, and then penalizes them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

Malcom X, My counselor, Mrs. Ross

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.

Emma Goldman, Living My Life, 1931

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.

Adlai Ewing Stevenson

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

Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned.... That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.

Walter Lippmann

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

Jimmy Carte

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

James Dean

It is faith among men that holds the moral elements of society together, as it is faith in God that binds the world to his throne.

William M. Evarts