Quotes About Society

you can only know a country when you have seen its prisons.

Scratch the thin veneer of what man called culture or civilization and in most cases you would find a barbarian waiting to be set free.

We are surrounded by modern, time-saving devices, but we never seem to have enough time.

Numbers of men are getting richer and greater numbers are getting poorer. Alas, both classes have higher expectations these days. In Short, sir, there has been a leap in bribes.

The whole system of society tells you what to do.

Whether you are a believer—fundamentalist, evangelical, moderate, liberal—or a nonbeliever, the Bible is the most significant book in the history of our civilization. Coming to understand what it actually is, and is not, is one of the most important intellectual endeavors that anyone in our society can embark upon.

the Internet! You knew the Mad Scientists invented the World Wide Web, right? Yep, back in the 1970s, the "Net" was a project designed to help with military communication. And here's the beauty of DARPA's mad scientists: they share their inventions whenever they can. Whenever DARPA comes up with an invention that will help society, they give it away. So, we ALL get to use the Internet. Thanks, DARPA!

societies define themselves by how they define and manage dangers.

Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

The purpose of the state is really freedom.

Der Endzweck des Staates ist [...] im Grund die Freiheit.

Citizens are not born, but made.

In a state of nature nothing can be said to be just or unjust; this is so only in a civil state, where it is decided by common agreement what belongs to this or that man.

El honor, en fin, constituye un gran impedimento porque para lograrlo es preciso vivir según la manera de ver de la gente, es decir, huir de lo que ella huye y buscar lo que ella busca.

You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind.

I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society. For it is in the nature of science, especially those branches of science which are spreading into unknown regions, to be continually changing e.

The law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

You say, "There are men who have no money," and you apply the law. But the law is not a self-supplied fountain, whence every stream may obtain supplies independtly of society. Nothing can enter the public treasury, in favor of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it.

These classes, according to the degree of enlightenment at which they have arrived, may propose to themselves two very different ends, when they thus attempt the attainment of their political rights; either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder, or they may desire to take part in it.

It used to be that you would go out to the theater and get a bite or you would go to the game and get a bite or go to the concert and get a bite. At this point in our society, the bite is often the main event. So it has to be more than turkey and gravy and potatoes. The lighting and the buzz and everything in addition to the food have an impact on what the customer feels. In that way, it's very much in the theatrical sense.

To be a useful man has always seemed to me a hideous thing.

Postmodernity is the simultaneity of the destruction of earlier values and their reconstruction. It is renovation without ruination.

Democracy is the menopause of Western society.