Quotes About Society

4. Principled Entrepreneurship: This principle—so central to our culture that we had it trademarked—is defined as "maximizing the long-term profitability of the business by creating superior value for our customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity." Creating value for society requires Principled Entrepreneurship—not political or other forms of entrepreneurship, such as corporate welfare or fraud.

Many people are extremely happy, but are absolutely worthless to society.

All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, Idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle rich; and there are busy poor and busy rich.... in a large view, the distinction between workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart and innermost economies of men of all ranks and in all positions. There is a working class — strong and happy — among both rich and poor; there is an idle class — weak, wicked, and miserable — among both rich and poor.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavours, with his utmost care, to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

But envy is so base and detestable, so vile in its original, and so pernicious in its effects, that the predominance of almost any other quality is to be preferred. It is one of those lawless enemies of society, against which poisoned arrows may honestly be used. Let it therefore be constantly remembered, that whoever envies another, confesses his superiority, and let those be reformed by their pride who have lost their virtue.

Gentlemen, bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport and a library card.

Working on the assumption (and it is only an assumption) that we have one life each it is important to every one of us that we do the best we can with it. If society says to us: 'We are prepared to look after you from the cradle to the grave provided you live in a boring place and work at a boring job' then we should consider very seriously whether this is a bargain we want to accept.

Pardon my sanity... in a world insane...

All human rules are more or less idiotic, I suppose. It is best so, no doubt. The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad... Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three... We are dominated by Journalism.

The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands.

Imagine what will happen to this nation if large numbers of American women start using the Wonderbra. It will be catastrophic. The male half of the population will be nothing but mindless drooling Zombies of Lust. Granted, this is also true now, but it will be even worse.

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

If Ayn Rand were an up-and-coming author today, she wouldn't write about steel or railroads, it would be net neutrality.

MENstrual cramps, MENtal breakdowns, MENopause — ever notice that many of women's problems begin with MEN?

I would like it if men had to partake in the same hormonal cycles to which we're subjected monthly. Maybe that's why men declare war — because they have a need to bleed on a regular basis.

Las Vegas: all the amenities of modern society in a habitat unfit to grow a tomato.

The condition of society is one of homogeneity and hyperindustrialism, so the individual perceptions of body and mind are not valued. Poetry is not the expression of the party line. It's that time at night, laying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

There is a lot of people who got Confidence, but they are careful who they have it in. We have plenty of Confidence in this country, but we are a little short of good men to place our Confidence in.

Future of America. — Perhaps America will one day go fascist democratically, by popular vote.