Quotes About Society

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.

Normal? Hateful word, normal. No meaning whatsoever.

We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government.

Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them.

We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.

As Rorschach so poetically put it, "This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not god who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."12

Not all intelligence can be artificial now, so if we make a mistake, the consequences are no longer simply located within an institution or a national culture.

The primary function of financial capitalism is to efficiently funnel money from those with an excess of it to those who need it.

The commercial banker performs three near-sacred functions central to any capitalist society: the safeguarding of other people's money; the provision of working capital to businesses, without which the economy cannot function; and the creation of money. By contrast, the investment banker sells stocks and bonds to the public, a much riskier and morally more ambiguous activity.

P. J. O'Rourke: "North Korea has a 99% literacy rate, a disciplined, hardworking society, and a $900 per capita GDP. Morocco has a 43.7% literacy rate, a society that spends all day drinking coffee and pestering tourists to buy rugs, and a $3,260 per capita GDP."1

The Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk stated that the cultural and political level of a nation could be discerned by its interest rate: The more advanced the nation, the lower the loan rate.

all democratic societies based on the rule of law, on the Tinkerbell Principle: it functioned only so long as its participants believed in it.48

In ancient societies, the law functioned as a two-edged sword; while standardizing procedure and bringing it out into the open, the law also concentrated power in those few who could read and write.

Mesopotamian cities identified closely with their deities, and their temples functioned as the main social and economic engines. The king served as the intermediary between the city and its deity, and his palace operated side by side with the temple. Both palace and temple commanded the key function in any society: the production and distribution of food.

As populations grow beyond Dunbar's number, face-to-face contact no longer suffices to maintain political control. At this point, writing supplies the best mechanism for communicating among large numbers of people, and power naturally accrues to the literate. Consequently, societies with high rates of literacy, such as Athens, tend to have more smoothly running republics than those with low rates, such as the late Roman one.

If our free society is to endure, and I know it will, those who govern must recognize that the Framers of the Constitution limited their power in order to preserve human dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.

If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

The Constitution does not speak of freedom for those who wish to say only what society approves. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression without qualification.

Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.

My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all society you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities - a 'we're all in it together' society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The new rage is to say that the government is the cause of all our problems, and if only we had no government, we'd have no problems. I can tell you, that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense.

Nations begin to dig their own graves when men talk more of human rights and less of human duties.

The schools turn wonder into drudgery and uniqueness into aberration. Acceptance by the dulled others becomes worth almost any surrender, and nothing is worth the price of solitude: to read, to ponder, to paint, to pray. In the new Plato's cave, we have the electronic shadows to make the unreal true and to give us an ersatz peace — even though every ad ever produced is deliberately formulated to make us unhappy.

Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.