quotations about society
Those who suffer their happiness to depend on the futile pleasures of society, instead of the resources of their own minds, resemble birds, who, with the power of soaring into the pure regions of the sky, descend, and loiter amid the dust of the earth, at the risk of being snared or destroyed by every vagrant urchin.
LADY BLESSINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is a society in the deepest solitude.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
Literary Character of Men of Genius
No entrance without any exit, no possible society without a spacious graveyard.
ERNST BLOCH
The Principle of Hope
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
No social stability without individual stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Gold is the key to society; but poverty its barrier.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated. It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today.
WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS
Points of Rebellion
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Society is immoral and immortal; it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice; it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Society therefore is as ancient as the world.
VOLTAIRE
A Philosophical Dictionary
I suppose Society is wonderfully delightful.
To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
OSCAR WILDE
A Woman of No Importance
Society is a chain of obligations, and its links must support each other;
The branch cannot but wither, that is cut from the parent vine.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
ERICH FROMM
The Sane Society
Parts of a machine
Modern day slavery
Dehumanizing control
Wasted lives fading
Sick Society System
Sick Society System
System of survival
CRIMINAL
"S.S.S."
Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
A participation in rights and advantages forms the bond of political society; an institution prior, in the intention of nature, to the families and individuals from whom it is constituted.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Individual societies begin in harmonious adaptation to the environment and, like individuals, quickly get trapped into nonadaptive, artificial, repetitive sequences. When the individual's behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to "drop out," "turn on," and "tune in."
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Politics of Ecstasy
Side by side and always tired
All for one and no-one hired
All that's left is love inspired
Low society
HEAVEN 17
"Low Society"
Man must have some recognized stake in society and affairs to knit him lovingly to his kind, or he is wont to revenge himself for wrongs real or imagined.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Were it not for some small remainders of piety and virtue which are yet left scattered among mankind, human society would in a short space disband and run into confusion, and the earth would grow wild and become a forest.
JOHN TILLOTSON
"The Advantages of Religion to Societies", The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson