Quotes About Society

We study there a lot because... what other choice does society give us, right? It's Starbucks or death, sometimes.

Murderers aren't a type. They're anyone.

Eton produced Society's Monsters - everyone knew that. Politicians, mostly, and occasionally people who ran banks and all the other institutions that stole the world's spoils for themselves.

In our lifetime those who kill the newsworld hands them stardom and these are the ways on which I was raised. —Morrissey, "The Last of the Famous International Playboys

Rearden sat in his room at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, fighting an enemy more dangerous than weariness or fear: revulsion against the thought of having to deal with human beings.

No group has any proper intellectual leadership today or any proper representation.

We are fornicating in the sight of six billion people.

She saw the faces streaming past her, the faces made alike by fear—fear as a common denominator, fear of themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met... She had kept herself clean and free in a single passion—to touch nothing. She had liked facing them in the streets, she had liked the impotence of their hatred, because she offered them nothing to be hurt.

What I mean is, what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much, said Mitchell Layton. having to decide, always to decide, torn every which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe. Nobody would come to him all the time pestering him to do something. Nobody would have to do anything. What I mean is, of course, except working for the common good.

Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do what the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies.

I think that your sister is awful. I think it's disgusting-a woman acting like a grease-monkey and posing around like a big executive. It's so unfeminine. Who does she think she is, anyway?

They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that's not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That's the only kind they fear. I don't know why. You're opening yourself up, Roark, for each and every one of them. But I never notice the people in the streets.

But it's a crime! It's a crime against the nation. Don't you know that?" "No." "It's against the law!" "Yes.

When you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction.

The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so.

There might be some sort of justification for the savage societies in which a man had to expect that enemies could murder him at any moment and had to defend himself as best as he could. But there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.

socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

It was a race he was running now, a race between his rent money and... he did not know the name of the other contestant. Perhaps it was every man whom he passed on the street.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

She did not mind this new background; she was indifferent to the slums as she had been indifferent to the drawing rooms.

We will build a society dedicated to higher ideals, and we will replace the aristocracy of money by—" "—the aristocracy of pull," said a voice beyond the group. They whirled around. The man who stood facing them was Francisco d'Anconia.

When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say.

I think it's funny. There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that's all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns—just somebody naming the exact nature of what you're doing?

If a drought strikes them, animals perish—man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish—man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish— man writes the Constitution of the United States.