quotations about society
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
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
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
The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power or means to coerce others.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
No social stability without individual stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
In society men protect themselves by protecting one another.
EMPEROR FOHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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 addicted to growth, and that's having terrible consequences for the planet and, increasingly, for us as well. We have to change our collective and individual behavior and give up something we depend on--power over our environment. We must restrain ourselves, like an alcoholic foreswearing booze. That requires honesty and soul-searching.
RICHARD HEINBERG
"Systemic Change Driven by Moral Awakening Is Our Only Hope", EcoWatch, August 14, 2017
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
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
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
No entrance without any exit, no possible society without a spacious graveyard.
ERNST BLOCH
The Principle of Hope
Justice is the great end of civil society.
DAVID DUDLEY FIELD
speech, March 1885
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."
Gold is the key to society; but poverty its barrier.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
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
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk
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
Without some portion of moral virtues, not even thieves can maintain society.
J. HARRIS
attributed, Day's Collacon