Quotes about society
page 7

“If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom. ”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“The occupation and destruction of peoples is paved with a political strategy, developed by a culture of society, and embodied by doctrines, systems and economic theories.”

Yasser Elshantaf (1983) Palestinian Entrepreneur

People

“Our society cannot be maintained by this type of incompetency.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

“The relations, therefore, between state and citizens are completely reversed by the fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic formula, ‘society for the individual,’ we have, ‘individuals for society’ with this difference, however: that while the liberal doctrines eliminated society, fascism does not submerge the individual in the social group. It subordinates him but does not eliminate him, the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element of society however transient and insignificant he may be.”

Alfredo Rocco (1875–1935) Italian politician and jurist

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

Relation ships, Parting

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law – by force – and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

The Law (1850)

Education, Religion, Law, Spring

“Fear? I believe that fear and lack of fear form a contradiction. The point is to take up our ideology, and unleash the courage within us. It is our ideology that makes us brave, that gives us courage. In my opinion, no one is born brave. It is society, the class struggle, that makes people and communists courageous--the class struggle, the proletariat, the Party, and our ideology.”

Abimael Guzmán (1934–2021) Peruvian communist

Interview with Chairman Gonzalo

People, Fear, Making love, Courage

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Edward Newenham (20 October 1792) http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi32.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=155&division=div1, these statements and one from a previous letter to Newenham seem to have become combined and altered into a misquotation of Washington's original statements to read:<br>Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society. <br class="br">As misquoted in The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back (2006) by Andrew Sullivan, p. 131 <br class="br">1790s

Age, Peace, Religion, Hope

“Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian. Without society, without education and powerful assistance which it gives, the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary capacities even in the rare as where it ought to shine.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch.IV

Education, Nature

“Children are the masters of the new society.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Source: Decree Regarding Marriage (January 28, 1931)

Children

“There is not, nor should there be, an irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective,… There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, Socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective. Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. More than that, socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between Individualism and Socialism.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

“Stalin-Wells Talk: The Verbatim Report and A Discussion”, G.B. Shaw, J.M. Keynes et al., London, The New Statesman and Nation, (1934) p. 7
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Sense

“We’ll advance human dignity by standing up for the rights of minorities, because no one’s equality should ever be denied. We will stand up for freedom of religion -- the right of every person to practice their faith as they choose -- because we are all children of God, and we are all fallible. And the notion that we, as a majority, or the state should tell somebody else what to believe with respect to their faith, is against our basic values. We will stand up for our gay and lesbian fellow citizens, because they need to be treated equally under the law. We will stand up for the rights and futures of our wives and daughters and partners, because I believe that the best measure of whether a nation is going to be successful is whether they are tapping the talents of their women and treating them as full participants in politics and society and the econ.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Queensland University Address (November 2014)

Women, God, Children, Faith

“The American people should itself do these things for the immigrants. If we leave the immigrant to be helped by representatives of foreign governments, by foreign societies, by a press and institutions conducted in a foreign language and in the interest of foreign governments, and if we permit the immigrants to exist as alien groups, each group sundered from the rest of the citizens of the country, we shall store up for ourselves bitter trouble in the future.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)

People, Future, Help, Country

“I had long been drawn to socialism and communism, and Russia had appealed to me. Much in Soviet Russia I dislike - the ruthless suppression of all contrary opinion, the wholesale regimentation, the unnecessary violence (as I thought) in carrying out various policies. But there was no lack of violence and suppression in the capitalist world, and I realised more and more bow the very basis and foundation of our acquisitive society and property was violence. Without violence it could not continue for many days. A measure of political liberty meant little indeed when the fear of starvation was always compelling the vast majority of people everywhere to submit to the will of the few, to the greater glory and advantage of the latter.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)

People, World, Fear, Communication

“Russia today is a Soviet country, and its government is run by representatives of the workers and peasants. In some ways it it the most advanced country in the world. Whatever actual conditions may be, the whole structure of government and society is based on the principle of social equality.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

World, Way, Country

“In the end, Indira Gandhi has earned her name as a great martyr on the doorsteps of history. With her courage and efficiency, she demonstrated that only she understood the realities of our corrupt and divided society and was capable of uniting the country dominated by rotten politics. She was a great woman and in her valiant death, she has become greater.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Nanaji Deshmukh, Quoted in Friends Of Saffron https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/friends-of-saffron/205424 Outlook Magazine, 27 April 1998

Death, History, Courage, Reality

“Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

"Communism. The Production of the Form of Intercourse Itself",
The Marx-Engels Reader
The German Ideology (1845/46)

“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Section 2, paragraph 25.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interests the common interest of all the members of society, that is, sality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

"Concerning the production of Consciousness"
The German Ideology (1845/46)

Making love, Universe, Appearance

“Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but is it nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Part One
Source: The German Ideology (1845/46), The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 187

Communication

“Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

"The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society"
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 105, The Marx-Engels Reader

Love, Money, Hate, Making love

“When communist workmen associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need - the need for society - and what appears as a means becomes an end. You can observe this practical processing its most splendid results whenever you see French socialist workers together. Such things as smoking, drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or means that bring together. Company, association, and conversation, which again has society as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is on mere phase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

"The Meaning of Human Requirements"
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p.99-100,The Marx-Engels Reader

Life, Drink, Appearance, Time

“God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and any other men. God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers and where every man will respect the dignity and the worth of human personality. This is what we work for and this is the good society which we must seek in America. But it will not come until enough people are willing to stand up and mobilize forces of good will, to seek to implement that which is just and right.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Men, God, People, Freedom

“The healing of the collective human consciousness is dependent upon us creating a society where we can make room for pain. You currently live in a world that has made only positive things, like positive emotions and success and being healed, acceptable. This is a world that sees anything less than this as a failure. This prevents people from healing. It prevents people from admitting to where they are and taking the sometimes counterintuitive steps they need to take in order to heal. It is ok to not be ok.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Pain, People, World, Making love

“William Penn, when only fifteen years of age, chanced to meet a Quaker in Oxford, where he was then following his studies. This Quaker made a proselyte of him; and our young man, being naturally sprightly and eloquent, having a very winning aspect and engaging carriage, soon gained over some of his companions and intimates, and in a short time formed a society of young Quakers, who met at his house; so that at the age of sixteen he found himself at the head of a sect. Having left college, at his return home to the vice-admiral, his father, instead of kneeling to ask his blessing, as is the custom with the English, he went up to him with his hat on, and accosted him thus: "Friend, I am glad to see thee in good health."”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

The viceadmiral thought his son crazy; but soon discovered he was a Quaker. He then employed every method that prudence could suggest to engage him to behave and act like other people. The youth answered his father only with repeated exhortations to turn Quaker also. After much altercation, his father confined himself to this single request, that he would wait on the king and the duke of York with his hat under his arm, and that he would not "thee" and "thou" them. William answered that his conscience would not permit him to do these things. This exasperated his father to such a degree that he turned him out of doors. Young Penn gave God thanks that he permitted him to suffer so early in His cause, and went into the city, where he held forth, and made a great number of converts; and being young, handsome, and of a graceful figure, both court and city ladies flocked very devoutly to hear him. The patriarch Fox, hearing of his great reputation, came to London — notwithstanding the length of the journey — purposely to see and converse with him. They both agreed to go upon missions into foreign countries; and accordingly they embarked for Holland, after having left a sufficient number of laborers to take care of the London vineyard.
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Health, Age, Home, Nature

“My expectation is that our families package, which we will be introducing as a matter of priority will have the effect of lifting tens of thousands of children out of poverty. From there, though, I want to establish clear targets. We’ve always said that we want them put in legislation, and every year we will then report, as part of the Public Finance Act, on how much progress we’ve made. So, I can say now that, yes, I wanted to match their 100,000, but I want incremental goals to hold us to account. In my mind, some of the targets that we’ve set ourselves, some of the goals that we measure ourselves on as a society, don’t take into account the effects on individuals, on their wellbeing. This will be a government that takes into account those markers, and the wellbeing of people will be my sign of success.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

Interview with Lisa Owen at Newshub Nation, 21 October 2017

Children, People, Family, Success

“We regard society as the ensemble and union of men engaged in useful work. We can conceive of no other kind of society.”

Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) French early socialist theorist

"Declarations of Principles"

Men

“Gender discrimination has had a twofold destructive effect on society. Firstly, it has opened society to slavery; second, all other forms of enslavement have been implemented on the basis of housewifisation”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, p.69

“Compared to what human life has mainly been like here on earth, our current societies are WEIRD.”

Michael Stevens (educator) (1986) Internet personality

"Our Narrow Slice", Vsauce (8 October 2013)

Life

“No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

2014 <br class="br">Source: theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-interview-transcript

“The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital…
The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i.e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour...
The mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.”

Karl Marx book Grundrisse

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, pp. 628–629.

Art, Way, Appearance, Science

“What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance the most astounding? That question is this—Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Variant: The question is this— Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.
Variant: Is man an ape or an angel? Now, I am on the side of the angels!
Source: Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference (25 November 1864), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (1929), p. 108

Angels, Question

“Never play to the gallery... Never work for other people in what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society... I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfil other people's expectations.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Inspirations (1997), quoted in "Looking back at David Bowie's invaluable advice for young artists" https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/david-bowie-advice-young-artists/

People, Way, Understanding, Thinking

“People may hate you for being different and not living by society's standards, but deep down, they wish they had the courage to do the same.”

Kevin Hart (1979) American comedian, actor and producer

“A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Some Principles of History", paragraph 104
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

“The only possible society is oneself.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act III
An Ideal Husband (1895)

“The global development of human society spawns so many gifted and talented individuals, whose creations will be a key factor in its further progress.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

“A scientific worldview is the key to a prejudice-free society.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

“The moral value of duty lies in its recognition by society.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

“The fact is, even in an Aryan society, which we do not have, one cannot and must not legislate morality. Morality must be inculcated in children by their parents and by the mythologies and subtle influence of constructive religion.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Drugs and Governments
Focus Fourteen

Children, Religion, Parent

“Ideals are a spiritual product of society’s self-critical attitude toward life. Putting them into practice is governed by the same society’s conscience.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Life

“Society may not be the most perfect, but without perfect people to exist, it cannot either.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

People, Perfection

“We finally had time to sit at home and reflect on how our society functions and whether or not it's functioning well for all of us. The overwhelming consensus was that it is not, it is insufficient – in fact, it's been unsustainable for decades, if not generations.”

Opal Tometi (1984) Nigerian–American writer, strategist and community organizer

Black Lives Matter Was Always Designed to Be a Global Movement, Vice] (7 July 2020)

Home, Time

“Knowledge is information whereas wisdom is practically applied information towards actual prosperity in life. That's why most professors and teachers are poor despite the fact that they are the most knowledgeable in our societies.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.34 (July 2018)

Life, Wisdom, Knowledge, Teachers

“It should be noted first and foremost that any nation, any people with the great goal of building a free and just life of a just society in its country, is going through a difficult, thorny and complex path of development.”

Shavkat Mirziyoyev (1957) President of Uzbekistan (2016-present)

Interview with the Editor-in-Chief of the «Yangi Uzbekiston» https://thediplomaticinsight.com/interview-president-of-the-republic-of-uzbekistan-shavkat-mirziyoyev/ (19 August 2021)

Life, People, Country

“When the intention is to spread Islam and annihilate non-Muslims, two widely discussed methods are love jihad and narcotics jihad. There is a section of people who want to establish that no such thing exists in our society today. They are trying to conceal the truth and reality.”

Joseph Kallarangatt (1956) Indian Syro-Malabar Catholic Church Bishop

India: Bishop decries ‘love jihad’ and ‘drug jihad,’ ‘In the eyes of a jihadi, non-Muslims are to be destroyed’ https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/09/india-bishop-decries-love-jihad-and-drug-jihad-in-the-eyes-of-a-jihadi-non-muslims-are-to-be-destroyed (september 13, 2021)

Love, People, Truth, Reality

“Familiarization with the values of a highly-developed society unveils generative energy in a person, thus making him free and independent.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Personality

“Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: "Forced Emigration," New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853.

Life, Money, Way, Housing

“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.

Education, School

“I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives... I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends, you know... I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I think they’re all insane. But I am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that, you know. That’s what is insane about it.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: Lennon “Our society is run by insane people”, Interview, June 6, 1968, Educate Inspire Change https://educateinspirechange.org/john-lennon-society-run-insane-people/John June 10, 2014

People, Thinking

“we are not ugly
we are just born in a judgmental society”

Attiah

“God does not want us to be slaves, but sons and daughters. He does not want to make decisions for us, or oppress us with a sacral power, exercised in a world governed by religious laws. No! He created us to be free, and he asks us to be mature and responsible persons in life and in society.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2020s, 2022

Life, God, World, Law

“Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

Source: White Teeth

Women, Men, Family, Change

“Society doesn't have values. People have values.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

From Created Equal, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 5 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/broadcasts/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=5.

People

“… status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Wealth

“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

People, Time, Dependency

“He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.”

Horace Walpole book The Castle of Otranto

Source: The Castle of Otranto

Happiness, Soul

“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Dead

“To increase desires to an unbearable level whilst making the fulfillment of them more and more inaccessible: this was the single principle upon which Western society was based.”

Michel Houellebecq book The Possibility of an Island

Source: The Possibility of an Island

“We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.”

J.M. Coetzee book Foe

Source: Foe

“People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.”

Robert Greene book The Art of Seduction

Source: The Art of Seduction

People

“‎Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

Source: On Photography

Reality

“There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Understanding, Dependency

“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Variant: The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

Children

“Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Religion, Art, Color, Wealth

“What the society thinks is of no interest to me. All that's important is how I see myself. I know who who I am. I know the value of my work.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in

Thinking

“Shri Ramakrishna use to say, "As Long as I Live, so long do I learn". That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Death, Learning

“Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Books, Light

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Self-Reliance

Thinking, Dead

“If you had to shoot a man, society had already failed.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Bands of Mourning

“The happiness of society is the end of government.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Happiness

“You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

“I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Motivation, Time

“There are no limits when you are surrounded by people who believe in you, or by people whose expectations are not set by the short-sighted attitudes of society, or by people who help to open doors of opportunity, not close them.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Source: The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

People, Help

“The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.”

Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter

Life, People, World, Soul

“In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Women

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Love, Pleasure, Music, Nature

“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America

“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter II.

Time, Painting

“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

“What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Books, Law

“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

“I have always found that actively loving
saves one from a morbid preoccupation
with the shortcomings of society.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Love

“When the enemy has no face, society will invent one.”

Susan Faludi (1959) American feminist

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)
Context: I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments. But if we will go on with the faith that nonviolence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, we will be able to change all of these conditions. And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.

Peace

“I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, un-available to us without such drugs.”

Lester Grinspoon (1928–2020) American physician

Source: Marihuana Reconsidered

Education