11 Matthew Arnold Quotes on Society

Matthew Arnold quotes on society

27. The kings of modern thought are dumb.

41. The free-thinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

43. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

46. English civilization - the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society-that is what interests me.

47. That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

48. What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.

80. The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential provider of elements without which a nation's spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman's thoughts.

86. The great apostle of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay.

107. Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

112. The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.

113. Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.