3,439 Society Quotes

Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.

The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.

But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world.

I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment.

Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort.

You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.

Black Americans make up 10 or 11% of the population, but they account now for something of 40 to 45% of all the abortions. This is a privileged position that I'm not sure anyone in their right mind would aspire to.

Every leader, and every regime, and every movement, and every organization that steps across the line to terrorism must be banished from the discourse of civilized human life.

At the root of the assault on our liberties is, in fact, an assault on our character--an assault that assumes that we are not good enough to be free, and that aims to make sure that we are no longer strong enough, courageous enough, disciplined enough to be a free people.

Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralisation of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem - in my opinion - to characterize our age.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.

Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. ... humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.

Only when an ideal of peace is born in the minds of the peoples will the institutions set up to maintain this peace effectively fulfill the function expected of them.

Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.

As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.

Remember, America: organization will set you free.

We must build a trickle-up media that reflects the true character of this country and its people. A democratic media serving a democratic society.

During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.

Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the 'greatest good for the greatest number' can excuse indifference to individual suffering. There is no test for progress other than its impact on the individual.

No wild beasts are so dangerous to men as Christians are to one another.

If individuals have no virtues, their vices may be of no use to us.

You should be glad that the government has provided for chain and bangles at their own expense, why are you feeling so bad about it?

Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.

Die Gesellschaft besteht nicht aus Individuen, sondern druckt die Summe der Beziehungen, Verhaltnisse aus, worin diese Individuen zueinander stehn.

Die Technologie enthullt das aktive Verhalten des Menschen zur Natur, den unmittelbaren Produktionsprozesss seines Lebens, damit auch seiner gesellschaftlichen Lebensverhaltnisse und der ihnen entquellenden geistigen Vorstellungen.

Soon it will be the phase of the moon When people tune in. Every girl knows about the punctual blues, But who's to know the power behind our moves?

Hey there, you lady in tears, Do you think that they care if they're real, woman? They just take it as part of the deal.

Kashka from Baghdad Lives in sin, they say, With another man, But no one knows who.

The civilised keep alive The territorial war... Erase the race that claim the place And say we dig for ore, Or dangle devils in a bottle And push them from the pull of the Bush.

Watching storms Start to form Over America. Can't do anything. Just watch them swing With the wind Out to sea.

When I got my salt scrub today, the woman doing it said 'Yes, in fact about 30% of our clientele are men. But mostly, they are Divorced Rich Beverly Hills Ladies.' And I thought (not out loud) who were these ladies? These 'ladies' were not born like that were they? Not destined to face lifts and peels, loneliness, tight lips and hard hair. No, in fact, hey were born free and beautiful and confident. And hopeful and anxious to find love. They only became Divorced Rich Beverly Hills Ladies because their rich husbands dropped them for someone more fuckable: maybe someone with long straight natural hair and thin legs who wears shorts and t- shirts with ease. Maybe a young photographer or writer. Someone interesting. No, the Divorced Rich Beverly Hills Ladies were too busy having and raising children, and too busy buying him gold toe socks at Barneys to become interesting.

This is what I know. The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart; something that came in all twisted and different is now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a marvel to behold.

Big Nurse speaks for the fixed pattern, the unbreakable routine, the submission of individual will to mechanical, humourless control. McMurphy speaks an older American language of freedom, unhindered movement, self-reliance, anarchic humour and a trust in the more animal instincts.

McMurphy is not merely up against the Big Nurse and her ward, but against all the controlling aspects of society, which molds its conformists into dull mechanical robots for the Combine.

This is a massive and violent schism and rupture in the internal organs of today's global culture and this is exactly why many social analysts believe that if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precarious.

It seems as if there are almost two different kinds of religion, one of which brutally divides, and one of which unites (or can unite). How do we tell them apart, and how might we begin to switch allegiance from the former to the latter?

I am in the awkward situation of writing a foreword to a book by a gay person. This is an awkward situation not because Joe Perez is gay, but because I have to point it out. I feel the same damn irritation as having to refer to, say, Edmund White as a 'gay writer.' Nobody has to point out that I am heterosexual, although now I hear that I am not a heterosexual but a metrosexual, although, in fact, I have never had sex with a metro in my life. But I'm sure it is a wonderful experience.

The occasional trip into realms labeled madness - can mean, especially if you are a writer, that you are given to telling the unvarnished, brutal, searing truth, whether society likes it or not. And not the Sylvia Plath look-at-me kinds of truth, but the spiritual-seer and mad-shaman types of truth, the truths that really hurt, the truths that get into society's craw and stick there, causing festering metaphysical sores indicative of social cancers or worse - but also the types of truth that speak to you deeply, authentically, radiantly, if you have the courage to listen.

I doubt if there are very many rational people in this world to whom the word 'fuck' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.

Here and there, betwixt the cradle and the coffin, I meet your silent brothers, The free men, unshackled, Sons of your mother earth and space. They are like the birds of the sky, And like the lilies of the field. They live your life and think your thoughts, And they echo your song. But they are empty-handed, And they are not crucified with the great crucifixion, And therein is their pain. The world crucifies them every day, But only in little ways. The sky is not shaken, And the earth travails not with her dead.

Master, Master Poet, Master of our silent desires, The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart, But it burns not with your song. The world sits listening to your voice in tranquil delight, But it rises not from its seat To scale the ridges of your hills. Man would dream your dream but he would not wake to your dawn Which is his greater dream. He would see with your vision, But he would not drag his heavy feet to your throne. Yet many have been enthroned in your name And mitred with your power, And have turned your golden visit Into crowns for their head and sceptres for their hand.

Neither of us has ever been married.

Politics has become a dirty word.

If Soviet society is to move forward with confidence toward our great goals, each new generation must rise to an ever-higher level of learning and general cultivation, occupational skill and civic activism. One might say that such is the law of societal progress. In the context of the scientific and technological revolution, under a virtual avalanche of information, this law imposes unwontedly high demands on both those who study and those who teach-from rank-and-file classroom teachers to government ministers.

I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.

In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people out of what was the most important thing on earth to them - the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect.

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules - and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.

The most useful thing I could do before this meeting is to keel over. On the other hand, artists are keeling over by the thousands every day and nobody seems to pay the least attention.

In case you haven't noticed, we:dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake.

If God were alive today, he would have to be an atheist, because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time.

[America's soldiers] are being treated ... like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

'We have to recognise our cultural differences, but accept that they enrich our society. We also have to accept that all communities and citizens have contributed to the nation. We must understand that our homeland can only reach its full promise if we all continue to contribute, with fair and equitable benefits for all. Finally, we must recognize that for the accomplishment of full nationhood and unity, we have to give greater emphasis to our common interests.'

The medical revolution that began with the beginning of the twentieth century had warped all human society for five hundred years. America had adjusted to Eli Whitney's cotton gin in less than half that time. As with the gin, the effects would never quite die out. But already society was swinging back to what had once been normal. Slowly; but there was motion. In Brazil a small but growing, alliance agitated for the removal of the death penalty for habitual traffic offenders. They would be opposed, but they would win.

10) Anarchy is the least stable of social structures.

I was about to say, 'Avoid fame like the plague,' but you know, they can cure the plague with penicillin these days.

She said 'I'm young enough I'm old enough In the city machine Where industries Fill the fish full of mercury'

The law, being an inherited accumulation, imposes itself on each generation willy-nilly. Any society whose members enter and leave it severally must for very convenience, to say nothing of deeper reasons, proceed by tradition; the neophyte must adopt existing habits and ways of acting, if for no better reason, through inexperience and diffidence. Mere custom will do the rest as he proceeds. And so the rule is canonized, its origins, and therefore its meaning, are ignored. But genuine learning is quite different.

You may ask what then will become of the fundamental principles of equity and fair play which our constitutions enshrine; and whether I seriously believe that unsupported they will serve merely as counsels of moderation. I do not think that anyone can say what will be left of those principles; I do not know whether they will serve only as counsels; but this much I think I do know - that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish.

The promotion of homosexuality would lead to the eventual destruction of the human race. [3]

Aesthetic theories arose one hundred fifty years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world. ...And notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else's theory so pleased the cultured crowd or was accepted so readily and with such absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated by the educated and uneducated as though it were something indubitable and self-evident.

unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but ...larger circles of people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an appearance of governing, took advantage of the people.

Laws are rules, made by people who govern by means of organized violence, for non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected to blows, to loss of liberty, or even to being murdered.

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relationship between master and slave.

In America you can ease into middle age with the accoutrements of adolescence still prominent and suffer relatively minor embarrassment: okay, so the guy's still got his sideburns and rod and beer and beergut and wife and three kids and a duplex and never grew up. So what? You're not supposed to grow up in America. You're supposed to consume. But in Britain it seems there is some ideal, no, some dry river one is expected to ford, so you can enter that sedate bubble where you raise a family, contributing in your small way to your society and keep your mouth shut. Until you get old, that is, when you can become an 'eccentric' - do and say outrageous things, naughty things, because it's expected of you, you've crossed to the other mirror of the telescope of childhood.

It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything. Whether it's music or Reaganomics, say, almost everybody prefers to sit and wait till somebody who seems to have some kind of authority even if it's seldom too clear just where they got it to come along and inform them one and all what their position on the matter should be. Then they all agree that this is gospel, and gang up to persecute whatever minority might happen to disagree. This is the history of the human race, certainly the history of music.

If, as many anthropologists still hold, the making and using of tools as one of the chief sources of primitive man's intellectual development, is it not time that we asked ourselves what will happen to man if he departs as completely as he now threatens to do from his primal polytechnic occupations? Since they can no longer be pursued at a profit, perhaps they will have to be restored as modes of sport and recreation, even more as helpful - increasingly essential - forms of personal service and mutual aid.

[W]e have things fundamentally backwards today: we let the needs of the economy dictate the nature of our society, while we should let the needs of our society determine the nature of our economy.

The doctrines of Calvinism involved a reversal of values with which Arnold became increasingly concerned. Work had always been a curse and a means, but it had now turned into a blessing and an end. The production of goods had become an end in itself and the consumption of goods only the means to further production. The factory was not made for man but man for the factory.

The aspects of society that humanism most exalts are justice and continuity. That is why humanism is always being presented with a contradiction. For when it speaks of justice it holds that the human condition is absolute; yet when it speaks of continuity it implies that society is not absolute but pragmatic and even anomalous. Its intelligence dictates the removal of all that is anomalous; yet its ideal of social continuity is validated by by its perception that the effort to destroy anomaly out of hand will probably bring new and even worse anomalies, the nature of man being what it is. 'Let justice be done though the heavens fall' is balanced by awareness that after the heavens fall justice will not ever be done again.

Three cheers for literacy... I feel sick.

Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.

On se doit assemer en robes et en armes en tel maniere que li preudome de cest siecle ne dient que on en face trop, ne les joenes gens de cest siecle ne dient que on en face peu.

All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. -- Quoted by Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion (1972 [c1945], p. 245), quoted from James A Haught, 2000 Years of Disbelief (see: Talk:Seneca_the_Younger)

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.

I regard women as an incarnation of tolerance.

I am sternly opposed to giving alms to sturdy beggars.

Why change the world when we can change ourselves?

Anyone, no matter how ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to become a parent.