quotations about society
Look around you: what you have done to society, you have done it first within your soul; one is the image of the other. This dismal wreckage, which is now your world, is the physical form of the treason you committed to your values, to your friends, to your defenders, to your future, to your country, to yourself.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
In his long evolutionary history, man has scored few greater successes than his creation of human society. For it is on that primeval achievement that he has built those special qualities of mind and of behaviour which, in his own view at least, separate him from lower forms of life. If we sometimes tend to overlook this fact it is only because we have lived so long under the protective ambience of society that we have come to take its benefits for granted.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
The man who lives alone is apt to forget the individuality of others; the man who lives in society is apt to forget his own.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Society is a sphere that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
I'm just the subject of discussion now
The one no-one admires
I'm society's victim
I'm not just sufferin' from paranoia
It's invented by you and them
DISCHARGE
"Society's Victim"
Society's failed us, Society's gonna pay
One way or another they'll feel our pain
ROGER MIRET & THE DISASTERS
"The Boys"
The earth is much over-populated, hence that abominable institution called "Society."
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
In society men protect themselves by protecting one another.
EMPEROR FOHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.
MARGARET THATCHER
interview, Woman's Own, October 31, 1987
If you really wish to become a man of society, you must learn first either to be an imbecile or to hold your tongue.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
OSCAR WILDE
An Ideal Husband
And therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary bereft of all society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the man, but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might derive from one man.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Our society is changing so rapidly that none of us can know what it is or where it is going.
EDWIN H. LAND
testimony, The Public Television Act of 1967: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Communications
Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection.
FRANCIS BACON
Advancement of Learning
Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No social stability without individual stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure -- but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France