Quotes About Society

The whole world is about three drinks behind.

He hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.

England is a nation of voyeurs.

Snobbery - the "pox Britannica"

Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

To be able to use leisure intelligently will be the last product of an intelligent civilization.

Genius develops in quiet places, character out in the full current of human life.

I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure as a test of value.

Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach, And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech.

Man's capacity for evil makes democracy necessary and man's capacity for good makes democracy possible.

There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.

When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.

In the long run every government is the exact symbol of its people, with their wisdom and unwisdom.

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves, in their separate and individual capacities.

The average man that I encounter all over the country regards government as a sort of great milk cow, with its head in the clouds eating air, and growing a full teat for everybody on earth.

The despotism of custom is everywhere standing up to human advancement.

There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.

Custom, that unwritten law, By which the people keep even kings in awe.

Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

Why is it that so many people are afraid to admit that they are happy?

The greatest happiness of the greatest number.

The entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.