Quotes about society

page 52

Section 28
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Context: Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)
Context: An open society is always in danger. It must constantly reaffirm its principles in order to survive. We are being sorely tested, first by 9/11 and then by President Bush's response. To pass the test we must face reality instead of finding solace in false certainties. This election transcends party loyalties. Our future as an open society depends on resisting the Siren's song.

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: One of the things that amazed the earliest explorers, almost without exception, was the hospitality with which Indians received them. When the Indians later learned that the Whites posed a threat, their attitude changed, but the initial contacts were idyllic.... Hospitality and sharing were characteristic of all Indian societies.

As quoted in Isaac Asimov (1977) by Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg, p. 165 http://books.google.com/books?id=8HCwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Babies+are+the+enemies+of+the+human+race%22&dq=%22Babies+are+the+enemies+of+the+human+race%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=i9ldVKqOM_jLsATbvYCgDA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAw
General sources
Context: We cannot afford enemies any more … Within a generation or two human society will be in total destructive disarray. Heaven knows how bad it will be. The most optimistic view I can take is this: Things will get so bad within a dozen years that it will become obvious … that we must, whether were like each other or not, work together. We have no choice in the matter. … Technologically, we can stop overpopulation, but we have to persuade people to accept the technology. … Babies are the enemies of the human race … Let's consider it this way: by the time the world doubles its population, the amount of energy we will be using will be increased sevenfold which means probably the amount of pollution that we are producing will also be increased sevenfold. If we are now threatened by pollution at the present rate, how will we be threatened with sevenfold pollution by, say, 2010 A. D., distributed among twice the population? We'll be having to grow twice the food out of soil that is being poisoned at seven times the rate.

Statements after the Solvay Conference of 1927, as quoted in Physics and Beyond (1971) http://www.edge.org/conversation/science-and-religion by Werner Heisenberg
Context: At the dawn of religion, all the knowledge of a particular community fitted into a spiritual framework, based largely on religious values and ideas. The spiritual framework itself had to be within the grasp of the simplest member of the community, even if its parables and images conveyed no more than the vaguest hint as to their underlying values and ideas. But if he himself is to live by these values, the average man has to be convinced that the spiritual framework embraces the entire wisdom of his society. For "believing" does not to him mean "taking for granted," but rather "trusting in the guidance" of accepted values. That is why society is in such danger whenever fresh knowledge threatens to explode the old spiritual forms. The complete separation of knowledge and faith can at best be an emergency measure, afford some temporary relief. In western culture, for instance, we may well reach the point in the not too distant future where the parables and images of the old religions will have lost their persuasive force even for the average person; when that happens, I am afraid that all the old ethics will collapse like a house of cards and that unimaginable horrors will be perpetrated. In brief, I cannot really endorse Planck's philosophy, even if it is logically valid and even though I respect the human attitudes to which it gives rise.
Einstein's conception is closer to mine. His God is somehow involved in the immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. But as far as he is concerned there is no split between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point.

The Personality of Jesus (1932)
Context: Wherever in a home there is immaturity, lack of self-control, and anti-social stimuli, coercion may be necessary in order to safeguard the other members of the family, and to prevent remorse for irreparable wrongdoing. To say that restraint administered in love and with the welfare of all concerned vividly in mind is immoral, is to reduce society to anarchy and chaos.

" The Hutchinson Family.—Hunkerism. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/minstrel/miar03bt.html," The North Star (Rochester, N. Y.: 27 October 1848).
1840s
Context: In this mean work of detraction, we scarcely need say that the miserable dough-face who edits the Cass paper in this city, and through whom our daughter was basely excluded from "Seward Seminary," on account of her complexion, very appropriately took the lead. This self-elected umpire of taste in the city of Rochester, claims as much skill in matters relating to the harmony of sounds, as he assumes with respect to the harmony of colors. We warn the good people of Rochester against attending either seminaries or concerts, on pain of being expelled from respectable and refined society, should they venture to do so before obtaining the opinion of this "most learned judge" whose word is sufficient to set at defiance and veto the wishes of a whole seminary of young ladies and misses. We believe he does not object to the "Virginia Minstrels," "Christy's Minstrels," the "Ethiopian Serenaders," or any of the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens. Those performers are undoubtedly in harmony with his refined and elegant taste!

The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: I'll say this much: virtually every advancement made by our species since civilization first peeked out of its nest of stone has been initiated by lone individuals, mavericks who more often than not were ignored, mocked, or viciously persecuted by society and its institutions. Society in general maintains such a vested interest in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die – or kill – than entertain change. Consider how threatened religious fundamentalists of all faiths remain to this day by science in general and Darwin in particular.
Cultural institutions by and large share one primary objective: herd control. Even when ostensibly benign, their propensity for manipulation, compartmentalization, standardization and suppression of potentially disruptive behavior or ideas, has served to freeze the evolution of consciousness practically in its tracks. In technological development, in production of material goods and creature comforts, we've challenged the very gods, but psychologically, emotionally, we're scarcely more than chimpanzees with bulldozers, baboons with big bombs.

Australians in a Nuclear War (1983)
Context: Many of those who hear me believe I am putting on an act, while others who had considered I am one who surely knows the answers, are depressed to find that, by my own admission, I don't. What I do know for certain is that what is regarded as success in a rational materialistic society only impresses superficial minds. It amounts to nothing and will not help us rout the destructive forces threatening us today. What may be our salvation is the discovery of the identity hidden deep in any one of us, and which may be found in even the most desperate individual, if he cares to search the spiritual womb which contains the embryo of what can be one's personal contribution to truth and life.

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, The Common Good (1998)
Context: The most extreme types, like Murray Rothbard, are at least honest. They'd like to eliminate highway taxes because they force you to pay for a road you may never drive on. As an alternative, they suggest that if you and I want to get somewhere, we should build a road there and charge people tolls on it. Just try generalizing that. Such a society couldn't survive, and even if it could, it would be so full of terror and hate that any human being would prefer to live in hell.

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: To begin with, if man, since his origin, has always lived in societies, the State is but one of the forms of social life, quite recent as far as regards European societies. Men lived thousands of years before the first States were constituted; Greece and Rome existed for centuries before the Macedonian and Roman Empires were built up, and for us modern Europeans the centralized States date but from the sixteenth century. It was only then, after the defeat of the free mediæval Communes had been completed that the mutual insurance company between military, judicial, landlord, and capitalist authority which we call "State," could be fully established.

"Freedom from Religion", The Nation (19 February 2001) http://www.thenation.com/article/freedom-religion/
Context: A genuinely democratic society requires a secular ethos: one that does not equate morality with religion, stigmatize atheists, defer to religious interests and aims over others or make religious belief an informal qualification for public office. Of course, secularism in the latter sense is not mandated by the First Amendment. It's a matter of sensibility, not law.

The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
Context: The natural liberty of man, by entering into society, is abridged or restrained, so far only as is necessary for the great end of society, the best good of the whole. In the state of nature every man is, under God, judge and sole judge of his own rights and of the injuries done him. By entering into society he agrees to an arbiter or indifferent judge between him and his neighbors; but he no more renounces his original right than by taking a cause out of the ordinary course of law, and leaving the decision to referees or indifferent arbitrators. In the last case, he must pay the referees for time and trouble. He should also be willing to pay his just quota for the support of government, the law, and the constitution; the end of which is to furnish indifferent and impartial judges in all cases that may happen, whether civil, ecclesiastical, marine, or military.

Ibid.
1890s

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p.xiii

World Theater Day Message, Geneva, Switzerland (2009)
Context: When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life.

Ch I : Government by Laws and Sanctions, why necessary
Political Disquisitions (1774)
Context: If there be, in any region of the universe, an order of moral agents living in society, whose reason is strong, whose passions and inclinations are moderate, and whose dispositions are turned to virtue, to such an order of happy beings, legislation, administration, and police, with the endlessly various and complicated apparatus of politics, must be in a great measure superfluous. Did reason govern mankind, there would be little occasion for any other government, either monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. But man, whom we dignify with the honourable title of Rational, being much more frequently influenced, in his proceedings, by supposed interest, by passion, by sensual appetite, by caprice, by any thing, by nothing, than by reason; it has, in all civilized ages and countries, been found proper to frame laws and statutes fortified by sanctions, and to establish orders of men invested with authority to execute those laws, and inflict the deserved punishments upon the violators of them. By such means only has it been found possible to preserve the general peace and tranquillity. But, such is the perverse disposition of man, the most unruly of all animals, that this most useful institution has been generally debauched into an engine of oppression and tyranny over those, whom it was expresly and solely established to defend. And to such a degree has this evil prevailed, that in almost every age and country, the government has been the principal grievance of the people, as appears too dreadfully manifest, from the bloody and deformed page of history. For what is general history, but a view of the abuses of power committed by those, who have got it into their hands, to the subjugation, and destruction of the human species, to the ruin of the general peace and happiness, and turning the Almighty's fair and good world into a butchery of its inhabitants, for the gratification of the unbounded ambition of a few, who, in overthrowing the felicity of their fellow-creatures, have confounded their own?

"On Freedom of Speech and the Press", Pennsylvania Gazette (17 November 1737) http://books.google.de/books?id=HptPAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA431&dq=pillar.
Context: Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

Credo (1965)
Context: I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity. If the tabus, restrictions, distorted values appear "natural" to him, this is a clear indication that he cannot have a real knowledge of human nature.
I believe that society, while having a function both stimulating and inhibiting at the same time, has always been in conflict with humanity. Only when the purpose of society is identified with that of humanity will society cease to paralyze man and encourage his dominance.

"Blueprint" 45
White Man, Listen! (1957)

Source: Jesus or Christianity: A Study in Contrasts (1929), p. 23
Context: It seems incredible that a man with such a message and such nobility of character should have been killed as an enemy of society. But is it surprising?... In a memorable passage Jesus refers to the fact that it is customary for one generation to stone the prophets and for another to erect monuments in their honor.

Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)
Context: Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation. In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that stormy, argumentative individualist who prided himself on being a man of paradox and a provoker of contradiction, published the work that established him as a pioneer libertarian thinker. It was What Is Property?, in which he gave his own question the celebrated answer: "Property is theft." In the same book he became the first man willingly to claim the title of anarchist.
Undoubtedly Proudhon did this partly in defiance, and partly in order to exploit the word's paradoxical qualities. He had recognized the ambiguity of the Greek anarchos, and had gone back to it for that very reason — to emphasize that the criticism of authority on which he was about to embark need not necessarily imply an advocacy of disorder. The passages in which he introduces "anarchist" and "anarchy" are historically important enough to merit quotation, since they not merely show these words being used for the first time in a socially positive sense, but also contain in germ the justification by natural law which anarchists have in general applied to their arguments for a non-authoritarian society.

Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this:
"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

"That what Everybody Says must be True".
Sketches from Life (1846)
Context: There is an instinct that leads a listener to be very sparing of credence when a fact is communicated; it doesn't ring well in his ears—it has too much or too little gloss; he receives it with a shrug, and passes it on with a huge notch in it to show how justly it is entitled to suspicion; he is not to be imposed upon by a piece of truth. But give him a fable fresh from the mint of the Mendacity Society—an on dit of the first water—and he will not only make affidavit of its truth, but will call any man out who ventures to dispute its authenticity.

Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 16
Context: All these years, he thought, dreaming about a companion. Now I meet one and the first thing I do is distrust her, treat her crudely and impatiently.
And yet there was really nothing else he could do. He had accepted too long the proposition that he was the only normal person left. It didn’t matter that she looked normal. He’d seen too many of them lying in their coma that looked as healthy as she. They weren’t, though, and he knew it. The simple fact that she had been walking in the sunlight wasn’t enough to tip the scales on the side of trusting acceptance. He had doubted too long. His concept of the society had become ironbound. It was almost impossible for him to believe that there were others like him. And, after the first shock had diminished, all the dogma of his long years alone had asserted itself.

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: For this new creation, born since 1900, a historian asked no longer to be teacher or even friend; he asked only to be a pupil, and promised to be docile, for once, even though trodden under foot; for he could see that the new American — the child of incalculable coal-power, chemical power, electric power, and radiating energy, as well as of new forces yet undetermined — must be a sort of God compared with any former creation of nature. At the rate of progress since 1800, every American who lived into the year 2000 would know how to control unlimited power. He would think in complexities unimaginable to an earlier mind. He would deal with problems altogether beyond the range of earlier society. To him the nineteenth century would stand on the same plane with the fourth — equally childlike — and he would only wonder how both of them, knowing so little, and so weak in force, should have done so much.

As quoted by Mark Pitzke, 'Iran Is My True and Only Home' http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/iran-s-crown-prince-reza-pahlavi-iran-is-my-true-and-only-home-a-641984-2.html, August 12, 2009.
Interviews, 2009

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

“The Challenge Of Implementing Democracy And Human Rights In Iran” http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=437&page=1, The International Society Of Human Rights - Bonn, Germany, March 27, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

Iran: Unleashing Her Potential Through Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=465&page=1, Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium, Johns Hopkins University, Oct. 12, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

As quoted in Peter Godspeed, 'It is my duty' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=462&page=2, Canada National Post, September 24, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

"Peace and Stability in the Middle East and Beyond: A Hostage to Iranian Intransigence and Adventurism." http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=142&page=4, Oct. 24, 2007.
Speeches, 2007

Thatcher, Margaret (2002). Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095912-6.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9676409-zamanism-is-about-creating-power-and-private-resources-for-all

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9672836-a-society-without-democracy-is-a-society-of-slaves-and

"Humanity", Ch.II "Ideologies: A way to live", Part V

2018, "Almost Everything is Black and White" (October 2018)

Greta Thunberg's FB page https://www.facebook.com/732846497083173/posts/853561781678310?s=723487177&sfns=mo, (15 June 2019)
2019

Source: The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925), p. 114

Source: The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925), p. 113

Source: The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925), p. 112

Source: The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925), p. 111

Source: The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925), pp. 108-109

Speech on Leadership in Speeches Delivered on Various Occasions, May 1957-December 1959 (1960), p. 138

IV. Is the Ideal Feasible?
Why Not Socialism? (2009)

IV. Is the Ideal Feasible?
Why Not Socialism? (2009)

facebook

instagram

Ahmadinejad United Nations Speech: Full Text Transcript, https://www.ibtimes.com/ahmadinejad-united-nations-speech-full-text-transcript-317114 International Business Times, 22 Oct 2011
2011

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Section 2.6
Workers Councils (1947)

Section 1.2
Workers Councils (1947)

Section 1.1
Workers Councils (1947)

Source: Workers Councils (1947), Chapter One, The Task, Section 1.2

Islam and Revolution, Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, Translated and Annotated by Hamid Algar, Mizan Press, Berkley, pp. 41.
Islamic government

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 1

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 1, opening

Source: ABC's of Communism, pp. 319

Source: ABC's of Communism, Ch.X, p. 282

131
ABC's of Communism

74
ABC's of Communism

72. Unified Popular Law-Courts
ABC's of Communism

Sita Ram Goel: Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

A Warning From Europe: The Worst is Yet to Come https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/poland-polarization/568324/ (October 2018), The Atlantic.

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), p. 41

Source: Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, From the Great War to the War on Terror (2006), p. xv

Remark at the annual conference of the Conservative and Unionist Teachers' Association in London (17 June 1961), quoted in The Times (19 June 1961), p. 7
Home Secretary

Remark at the annual conference of the Conservative and Unionist Teachers' Association in London (17 June 1961), quoted in The Times (19 June 1961), p. 7
Home Secretary

"The EU melting pot is melting down" https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/06/18/the-melting-pot-melting-down/2tShNLlY7JLn4v3PQEtoLK/story.html Boston Globe, June 18, 2018.

Source: The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929), pp. 101-102

The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929), p. 91

House of Lords debate on antisemitism, 20 June 2019 https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/tonge-blames-israel-for-jew-hate-during-debate-on-antisemitism-1.485685
Other

Quoted in GloucestershireLive. UPDATE: European elections 2019: Molly Scott-Cato pulls out of hustings event at Gloucester Cathedral over UKIP at last minute https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/molly-scott-cato-pulls-out-2881395 (17 May 2019)
2019

How dictators fall https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/02/protests-how-dictators-fall, 2 Mar 2011, The Guardian.

Source: "On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought" (Aug 19, 1872), pp. 156-157.

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Source: Anarchy and Christianity (1988), p. 28

Source: Anarchy and Christianity (1988), p. 14

Vintage, p. xviii
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

From the Vintage paperback (1973), p. xvii
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

All for Australia (1984)

ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), Is Casual Sex Bad for Your Soul? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKrbvLkbHu8 (2017)

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav in Ch. 32 : dismé in hold, p. 283
The Visitor (2002)

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 41, p. 293

On how female rage is portrayed in Monstress in “Marjorie Liu on the Road to Making Monstress” https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/09/marjorie-liu-monstress-interview/539394/ in The Atlantic (2017 Sep 14)

On who is considered a feminist hero in “A Conversation with Blair Imani” https://www.readitforward.com/author-interview/a-conversation-with-blair-imani/ in Read It Forward

Marino, Andy (2014). Narendra Modi: A political biography. Ch. 7.

Speech in Oxford town hall (30 December 1872), quoted in The Times (31 December 1872), p. 5

February 20, 2002 The Sanjh Times quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.
2002