Quotes About Society

happiest and the most comfortable. It is hard in the stationary, and miserable in the declining state. The progressive state is in reality the cheerful and the hearty state to all the different orders of the society. The stationary is dull; the declining melancholy.

Como señalaba Hayek: «Sostener que debemos planificar de forma deliberada la sociedad moderna porque se ha vuelto demasiado compleja es, por tanto, paradójico, y el resultado de un malentendido total [...]. Lo cierto es, más bien, que podemos preservar un orden de semejante complejidad [...] solo de manera indirecta reforzando y mejorando las reglas que conducen a la formación de un orden espontáneo».

Japan. So successful was the Japanese 'welfare superpower' that by the 1970s life expectancy in Japan had become the longest in the world. But that, combined with a falling birth rate, has produced the world's oldest society, with more than 21 per cent of the population already over the age of 65.

World War I saw the birth of total war, in the sense that it was fought between societies as much as armies.

Only by historical methods can we explain why, over the past thirty years, so many countries created forms of debt that, by design, cannot be inflated away; and why, as a result, the next generation will be saddled for life with liabilities incurred by their parents and grandparents.

Hemos olvidado profundamente en todas partes que el Pago Monetario no es la única relación entre seres humanos... No es el único nexo del hombre con el hombre' —Thomas Carlyle

The life of a hunter-gatherer is indeed, as Thomas Hobbes said of the state of nature, 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.

Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson

The popular view was that (as in the 1790s) the blood tax – l'impôt du sang – should be borne by all

primera sociedad de masas consumidoras del mundo.

A society that expects most individuals to take responsibility for the management of their own expenditure and income after tax, that expects most adults to own their own homes and that leaves it to the individual to determine how much to save for retirement and whether or not to take out health insurance, is surely storing up trouble for the future by leaving its citizens so ill-equipped to make wise financial decisions.

For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three forms of Government, he establishes it for a short time only, since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, by reason of the close resemblance which, in this case, the virtue bears to the vice.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

The nature of man is such that people consider themselves put under an obligation as much by the benefits they confer as by those they receive.

the manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good.

men live peacefully as long as their old way of life is maintained and there is no change in customs.

But in republics there is more vitality, more hatred, and more desire for revenge. The memory of former freedom simply will not leave the people in peace.

If princes are indeed superior to the people in enacting laws, in organizing civil governments, in setting up new statues and ordinances, then doubtless the people are so superior in maintaining what has been instituted that they increase the glory of those who instituted them.

there are two distinct viewpoints in every republic: that of the populace and that of the elite. All the laws made in order to foster liberty result from the tensions between them

good individuals cannot exist without good education, and good education cannot exist without good laws

If in other respects the old condition of things be continued, and there be no discordance in their customs, men live peaceably with one another...

I say then that such a principality is obtained either by the favour of the people or by the favour of the nobles. Because in all cities, these two distinct parties are found, and from this it arises that the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one of three results, either a principality, self-government, or anarchy.

government should be elevated into a living moral force, capable of inspiring the people with a just recognition of the fundamental principles of society;