Quotes About Society

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.

We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as DeTocqueville describes it, a new form of servitude.

Byen var et uhyre, som uavbrutt fødte, oppløste og slukte nye mennesker.

Die Welt ist in die Hände einer verrückten Irrenärztin gefallen.

Die Welten sind nach der Hauptstadt gerauscht in ihren Cadillacs. Zum Hochzeitsfest.

Die Welt machte mich zu einer Hure, nun mache ich sie zu einem Bordell.

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.

All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another--no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

Wenn überhaupt die Geschichte auch im Jünglingsalter der Völker eine edle Lehrerin ist, so hat sie in Zeitaltern, wie das unsrige, noch ein anderes und heiligeres Amt.

Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how to charm.

Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality

Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them.

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.

Only sick music makes money these days.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.