Quotes About Society

For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all.  Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.  That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view.  They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins.  They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. 

The trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings.

What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Nowadays, people read too many books to appreciate any.

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—

Well, she wore far too much rouge last night, and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of desperation in a woman.

I don't care about the London season! It is too matrimonial. People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding from them.

But you don't really mean to say that you couldn't love me if my name wasn't Ernest? GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest. JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn't love me then? GWENDOLEN (glibly) : Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.

The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.

You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.

Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.

Everybody one meets is a paradox nowadays. It is a great bore. It makes society so obvious.

To be in Society is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy. Society is a necessary thing.

LADY BRACKNELL I had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now. ALGERNON I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.

Women have no appreciation of good looks—at least, good women have not.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. 

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves.  The Greeks were quite right there.  Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.  Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising.  On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. 

It is personalities, not principles, that move the age

That's an awful thing,a womans memory