Quotes About Society

When you say the people you mean, of course, the populace. Will you abolish it? That is the only way to ameliorate its lot, for as long as it remains populace its lot will be damnation.

At least you will admit—you have, in fact, admitted it—that we could not be worse governed than we are?" "That is not the point. The point is should we be better governed if we replaced the present ruling class by another? Without some guarantee of that I should be the last to lift a finger to effect a change. And what guarantees can you give?

I am ready to admit that the present government is execrable, unjust, tyrannical—what you will; but I beg you to look ahead, and to see that the government for which it is aimed at exchanging it may be infinitely worse.

And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a mad species.

Nothing on earth is more vicious than a disappointed American public.

Also, serial killers, child killers, they're hot, they're the new cool kids, the new vampires, the new zombies, everybody's favourite spook monster.

Two common problems with our society: 1) We are forced to study what we are not passionate about. 2) We are forced to love what ever we get.

the rule of thumb' referred historically to the maximum width of the stick with which a man could beat his wife without breaking the law.

Society suffers when any of the pillars weakens or strengthens overly relative to the others. Too weak the markets and society becomes unproductive, too weak a democratic community and society tends toward crony capitalism, too weak the state and society turns fearful and apathetic. Conversely, too much market and society becomes inequitable, too much community and society becomes static, and too much state and society becomes authoritarian. A balance is essential!

Do not believe that you can find a universal remedy for evil conditions or immoral practices in effecting a fundamental change in society (as by State Socialism). And do not pin too much faith in legislation. Remedial institutions are apt to fall under control of the enemy and to become instruments of oppression.6

mind is a terrible thing to waste, and the United States is wasting too many of them.

Indeed, as we will see in the book, healthy communities are essential for sustaining vibrant market democracies. This is perhaps why authoritarian movements like fascism and communism try to replace community consciousness with nationalist or proletarian consciousness.

The personal checks and balances that most of us bring to bear when we are employed in other activities - we ask ourselves if we are producing a socially useful product - operate less well in finance because, with few exceptions, making money is the Raison d'être (reason for existence) for the financier

These strongly Aristotelian attitudes, which still dominate many societies today, reflected a suspicion of the middleman. They were thought to make money not by adding intrinsic value to the traded item, but by moving goods or money to areas of shortage, or even, many believed, by creating the shortage in the first place.

Equality can only exist between equals. Civilization implies division of labor, division of labor implies subordination and subordination implies injustice and inequality.

And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.

The fact that Hindus and Muslims had worked jointly, 'renouncing their mutual antipathies', also interested Marx.

Daily Tribune, 5 August 1853: England has to fulfil a double mission in India, one destructive, the other regenerating—the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia.

It seems the most logical thing in the world to believe that the natural resources of the Earth, upon which the race depends for food, clothing and shelter, should be owned collectively by the race instead of being the private property of a few social parasites.

Some say that society is divided into those who have and those who have not but wished they had. I believe a more fundamental division is between those who know and those who do not know and have no idea they do not know.

And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.

When theater becomes a soothing middle-class thing, when it's packaged as the Night Out, then that's the death of it.