Quotes About Society

Vuole credere lei che sarei orgoglioso e felice di possedere un amico tra gli uomini? Ma fino ad ora ho avuto amici solo tra demoni, farfarelli, mostri oscuri e fantasmi afasiaci, vale a dire: tra letterati.

La barbarie n est le contraire de la culture que dans le cadre de la hierarchie de pensee que celle-ci nous propose.

the idea that an unfavourable influence exerted upon a man's personal life by the times in which he lives may even extend to his physical organism.

El reposo es el primer deber del ciudadano, y la impaciencia no hace más que perjudicarle.

De la culture et de la fortune, voilà le bourgeois.

que fenômeno estranho vem a ser este que bloqueia e apaga a capacidade de julgar dos homens, que lhes furta esse direito ou os condiciona a abdicar, em absurda exultação, desse mesmo direito?

Democracy is eternal and human. It dignifies the human being; it respects humanity.

Para todo amigo de la ilustración, la palabra «pueblo» y su concepto mismo conservan algo de primitivo que causa aprensión y es porque se sabe que basta tratar de pueblo a la multitud para predisponerla a actos de regresiva maldad. Ante nuestros ojos, o lejos de ellos, ¿cuántas cosas no han ocurrido en nombre del pueblo que no hubiesen podido ocurrir en nombre de dios, de la humanidad o del derecho?

Leider sei eben heute alles Politik, es gebe keine geistige Reinheit mehr.

Das Ewige stimmt quietistisch. Das Menschliche ist dem Politischen im Grunde fremd.

Richard Wagner once declared that civilization disappears before music like mist before the sun. he never dreamed that one day, for its part, music would disappear before civilization, before democracy, like mist before the sun.

There is a whole culture in the United States—a growing one, it seems—that consciously walls out facts it doesn't want to know. These facts cluster together: evolution by natural selection; climate change; our society's growing recognition of equal rights for all persons; the citizen's responsibilities to the citizenry; the damage humans have done to natural systems and our duty to try to heal them.

We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.

One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.

When men are merely submerged in a mass of impersonal human beings pushed around by automatic forces, they lose their true humanity, their integrity, their ability to love, their capacity for self-determination

The time will come when they will sell you even your rain.

There are crimes that no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been (too easily) convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done 'for the common good'.

We [vowed religious; nuns, monks] want to be squares, and we want others to be square, also. That's what religious have been doing. They're part of a square society. And let me be quite clear about the fact that liberalism doesn't get you off this hook, because liberals are part of the square society, too. It's better to be a liberal than a conservative, but they're both equally square.

being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.

But nevertheless, no man who seeks liberation and light in solitude, no man who seeks spiritual freedom, can afford to yield passively to all the appeals of a society of salesmen, advertisers and consumers.

When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility

There are so many voices heard today asserting that one should have religion or believe, but all they mean is that one should associate himself, sign up with some religious group. Stand up and be counted. As if religion were somehow primarily a matter of gregariousness...

For great and horrible punishments be appointed for thieves, wheras much rather provision should have been made that there were some means they might get their living, so that no man should be driven to this necessity.