Quotes About Society

Reformar la sociedad por medio de leyes es el sueño del ciudadano incauto y el preámbulo discreto de toda tiranía. La ley es forma jurídica de la costumbre o atropello a la libertad.

The plethora of laws is a sign that nobody knows anymore how to command intelligently. Or that nobody knows anymore how to obey freely. When the tyrant is the anonymous law, modern man believes he is free.

Opinions, customs, institutions, cities—everything has become vulgar, since we gave up repairing the old in order to buy every day some gaudy novelty.

By means of the notion of "cultural evolution," the democratic anthropologist tries to avoid questions of biology.

The contemporary anthropologist, under democrats' severe gaze, skips quickly over ethnic differences like over hot coals.

Humanity will one day solemnly recall the events that initiated the dismantlement of the industrial society.

Frustration is the distinctive psychological characteristic of democratic society. Where all may legitimately aspire to the summit, the entire pyramid is an accumulation of frustrated individuals.

The three hypostasis of egoism are: individualism, nationalism, collectivism. The democratic trinity.

Adapting to the modern world demands the hardening of one's sensibility and the debasing of one's character.

The political presence of the masses always culminates in a hellish apocalypse.

Wir wollen hier auf Erden schon das Himmelreich errichten'. Aber welches denn Heine? Das sozialistische Paradies, von dem sie in der Konsumgesellschaft träumen, oder die Konsumgesellschaft, von der sie im sozialistischen Paradies träumen?

De menselijke warmte in een samenleving wordt minder naar de mate waarin haar wetgeving volmaakter wordt.

To refute the new morality, all one needs to do is examine the faces of its aged devotees.

Perception of reality, today, dies crushed between modern work and modern entertainment.

Man no longer knows how to invent anything that does not serve to kill better or to make the world a little more vulgar.

Religion did not arise out of the need to assure social solidarity, nor were cathedrals built to encourage tourism. Religion is socially effective not when it adopts socio-political solutions, but when it succeeds in having society be spontaneously influenced by purely religious attitudes

Probablemente en otras épocas abundaron las porquerías tanto como en la nuestra, pero en ninguna tuvieron los discursos que las justifican y alaban popularidad semejante.

Civilizations are not made "avec des idées" but with good manners.

Society tends to be unjust, but not in the way the conceited imagine. There are always more masters who do not deserve their position than servants who do not deserve theirs.

The man who invents a new machine invents for humanity a new concatenation of new forms of servitude.

An age is civilized if it does not reserve intelligence for professional work.

En este siglo toda empresa colectiva edifica prisiones. Sólo el egoísmo nos impide colaborar en vilezas. Hoy los copartícipes terminan en cómplices.

The most precise and shortest definition of a true civilization has been given by Trevelyan: A leisured class with large and learned libraries in their country seats.

The worst [type of] totalitarianism is not that of a state or a nation, but of society: society as the all-encompassing goal of all goals.