Quotes About Society

Perhaps, for the common people a rewarding and avenging God is necessary. Bayle had asked, If a society of atheists could subsist? Voltaire answers, Yes, if they are also philosophers. But men are seldom philosophers.

No es la raza la que crea la civilización, es la civilización la que crea el pueblo: las circunstancias geográficas, económicas y políticas crean una cultura, y la cultura crea un tipo humano.

But how far has human nature changed in the course of history? Theoretically there must have been some change; natural selection has presumably operated upon psychological as well as upon physiological variations. Nevertheless, known history shows little alteration in the conduct of mankind.

No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

I don't as a rule hold much of a brief for television. In my experience, all too often it bowdlerises as much as popularises.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion

Mercy is the golden chain by which society is bound together.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags, Are toadstools on the miser's bags. A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent

Thus class boundaries were also cultural boundaries and in a very real sense constituted health boundaries as well.

Life might be cheap on Terra ... but living wasn't.

The pure products of America go crazy... ...[] No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car

After some years of varied experience with the bodies of the rich and the poor a man finds little to distinguish between them, bulks them as one and bases his working judgements on other matters.

Voting represented no rational process, but was simply traditional in certain societies for obtaining consensus and expressing the will of a group. The vote expressed more about the committee or college than it did about the elected person.

All well bred persons lie – Besides, you are a woman; you must never speak what you think…

All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

Curiously, the failures of Communism are more often treated as a joke than as a tragedy.

The world is a giant ashtray we put things into.

He told us that most of our civic problems were problems brought on or exacerbated by government, not problems that could be solved by government. That, of course, is enduringly true. Only government can cause inflation, preserve monopoly, and punish enterprise.

The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists.

Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.