Quotes About Society

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. Freedom

Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.

We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought.

I see one-third of a nation ill housed, ill clad, ill nourished...the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those that have too little

Concentration of wealth and power has been built upon other people's money, other people's business, other people's labor. Under this concentration, independent business has been a menace to American society.

We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop what it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left a trail of graft and slime, It don't prohibit worth a dime, It's filled our land with vice and crime. Nevertheless, we're for it.

It never ends, this business of being a lady.

Poor Cecil. It's hard to be a devil of a fellow in these modern times. No stagecoaches to hold up. No princesses to rescue. Just Petey Todd to escort, while the easy, expert fellow walks the pretty girl home.

When we see a disciplined society, there is often a social hierarchy behind it. This hierarchy, which determines who can eat or mate first, is ultimately rooted in violence.

It is said that man is wolf to man. I find this very unfair to wolves.

Rather than reflecting an immutable human nature, morals are closely tied to the way we organize ourselves.

Conventions are often surrounded with the solemn language of morality, but in fact they have little to do with it.

biology is usually called upon to justify a society based on selfish principles, but we should never forget that it has also produced the glue that holds communities together.

Perhaps religion is like a ship that has carried us across the ocean, having allowed us to develop huge societies with a well-functioning morality. Now that we are spotting land, some of us are ready to disembark

In every language, labels for adulterous women are far worse than those for similarly adventurous men. When a woman is a "a slut," a man is merely a skirt chaser.

Even those who believe that humans are more egalitarian than chimpanzees will have to admit that our societies could not possibly function without an acknowledged order.

Mead stresses the universality of male competition, stating that "in every known human society, the male's need for achievement can be recognized." Men, to feel fulfilled and successful, need to excel at something—to be better at it than other men and better than women.13

Sociobiology, E. O. Wilson

We can't return to this preindustrial way of life. We live in societies of a mind-boggling scale and complexity that demand quite a different organization than humans ever enjoyed in their state of nature. Yet, even though we live in cities and are surrounded by cars and computers, we remain essentially the same animals with the same psychological wants and needs.