Society

"This new rage for rhyming badly, Which late hath seized all ranks and classes, Down to that new estate 'the masses.'"

"What will Mrs. Grundy say?"

"The absence of hope can rot a society from within."

"Intense suffering may be a private, internal phenomenon, often hidden from the gaze or awareness of others, but it is the most viscerally overwhelming experience there is, pleading desperately for relief. There is nothing else that has greater urgency than preventing or relieving intense suffering – of human beings and, indeed, of any sentient beings capable of suffering. It is the single most important goal of a compassionate society."

"Our genetically enriched descendants may regard existence without "dukkha" - the abolition of suffering - as the ethical foundation of any civilised society."

"I dread to think of a society devoid of love, compassion and humanity."

"Heav'n forming each on other to depend, A master, or a servant, or a friend, Bids each on other for assistance call, Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all."

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

"The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws."

"Society has enfeebled man, not merely by robbing him of the right to his own strength, but still more by making his strength insufficient for his needs."

"There are two kinds of dependence: dependence on things, which is the work of nature; and dependence on men, which is the work of society."

"In human society man is the chief tool of man."

"Money is the source of all the false ideas of society."

"The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them."

"A person who cannot live in society, or does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is either a beast or a god."

"What is not good for the beehive, cannot be good for the bees."

"For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast."

"Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection."

"Man becomes conscious of himself and his humanity only in society and only by the collective action of the whole society."

"I’ve inspected your profile. You are not stupid. Misguided, idealistic, naive, certainly, but not stupid. You must know how societies work. You must at least have an inkling. They work on force, power and coercion. People don’t behave themselves because they are nice. That’s the liberal fallacy. People behave themselves because if they don’t they will be punished. All this is known. It isn’t even debatable. Civilisation after civilisation, society after society, species after species, all show the same pattern. Society is control: control is reward and punishment. Reward is being allowed to partake of the fruits of that society and, as a general but not unbreakable rule, not being punished without cause."

"Building up societies with “dead souls” is no great achievement."

"The quest for other, and better, forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actually elsewhere; but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on earth."

"The history of society is the history of the inventive labors that man alter man, alter his desires, habits, outlook, relationships both to other men and to physical nature, with which man is in perpetual physical and technological metabolism."

"I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance."

"A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one— And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all."

"But now being lifted into high society, And having pick'd up several odds and ends without any danger of a riot, he Might for long lying make himself amends; And singing as he sung in his warm youth, Agree to a short armistice with truth."

"What times! What manners!"

"The only living socities are those which are animated by inequality and injustice."

"It is the retention by twentieth-century, men of the Neolithic point of view that says: You stay in your village and I will stay in mine. If your sheep eat our grass we will kill you, or we may kill you anyhow to get all the grass for our own sheep. Anyone who tries to make us change our ways is a witch and we will kill him. Keep out of our village."

"Those families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand."

"In human society the warmth is mainly at the bottom."

"The rout is Folly's circle, which she draws With magic wand. So potent is the spell, That none decoy'd into that fatal ring, Unless by Heaven's peculiar grace, escape. There we grow early gray, but never wise."

"It's not sex and drug advice these kids need, so much as help in acquiring a world view, in motivating them to take responsibility and enabling them to build proper relationships."

"Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported."

"The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”"

"The dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished."

"The virtues of society are the vices of the saint."

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members."

"Every man is like the company he is wont to keep."

"In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries."

"For every social wrong there must be a remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong ]Liyabona Kakaza], Social Problems, Chapter IX. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 724–25."

"The noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure."

"I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London."

"A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame … as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world … aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure."

"We have really lost in our society the sense of the sacredness of life."