Quotes About Society

Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing instruction for all and it must answer for the night with it produces. If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness. (Bishop of D)

He was fine; he, that orphan that foundling that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked full in the face that society from which he was banished, and into which he had so powerfully intervened; that human justice from which he had snatched its prey; all those tigers whose jaws perforce remained empty; those myrmidons, those judges, those executioners, all that royal power which he, poor, insignificant being, had foiled with the power of God.

We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menaechmus of talent, has one dupe,--history.

Suffering engenders passion; and while the prosperous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill-constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and sets to work to examine society. The examination of hatred is a terrible thing.

Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.

if she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a priest

The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.

Fex urbis, lex orbis (The dregs of the city, the law of the earth), from Les Miserables, attributed to St. Jerome

A soul for a piece of bread. Misery makes the offer; society accepts.

It's not enough to abolish abuse; custom must also be transformed. The mill was pulled down, but the wind still blows.

He was indulgent to women and to the poor, oppressed by the weight of society. The faults of women, children, and servants, he said, and of the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the faults of husbands, fathers and masters, and of the strong, the rich and the learned. He also said: Teach the ignorant as much as you can. Society is to blame for not giving free education; it is responsible for the darkness it creates. The soul in darkness sins, but the real sinner is he who caused the darkness.

They shall exist, and so long as society shall be what it is, they will be what they are. Under the dark vault of their cave, they are forever reproduced in the ooze. What is required to exorcise these goblins? Light. Light in floods. No bat resists the dawn. Illuminate society.

So how do magistrates understand the word civilization? Where do we stand with it? Justice reduced to subterfuge and trickery! The law to machinations! Appalling!

Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

It is necessary that society should look at these things, because it is itself which creates them.

The Convention promulgated this great axiom: The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins, which comprises in two lines the entire law of human society.

two principal problems. First problem: To produce wealth. Second problem: To distribute it.... England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth wonderfully; she distributes it badly.... [she has] a grandeur ill constituted, in which all the material elements are combined, and into which no moral element enters. Communism think they have solved the second problem. They are mistaken. They destroy production...

And that is how a self-seeking hotchpotch distorts and debases the very finest social schemes. It is the black vein in white marble; it gets everywhere, appears under your chisel at any moment without warning. Your statue has to be redone.

All civilisation begins with a theocracy and ends with a democracy. This law of liberty succeeding unity is written in architecture.

The world is like Olympus - even a thief is accepted in it if he is also a god.

the phantom of social justice tormented him.

He said, moreover, Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.

Ne soyons plus anglais ni français ni allemands. Soyons européens. Ne soyons plus européens, soyons hommes. - Soyons l'humanité. Il nous reste à abdiquer un dernier égoïsme : la patrie.