Quotes About Society

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.

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

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him.

If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.

As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascinations. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Chastity is the greatest form of perversion.

Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.

Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Non ho alcun preciso sentimento nei riguardi della società, di Dio e dell'uomo, però con tanta maggiore forza amo la vita, la fede e l'amore.

The man makes History, the woman is History.

Societies decline when the upper classes emulate the lower classes.

Un tempo non era permesso a nessuno di pensare liberamente. Ora sarebbe permesso, ma nessuno ne è più capace. Ora la gente vuole pensare ciò che si suppone debba pensare. E questo lo considera libertà.

Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.

Great men have always preferred women of the prostitute type.

There are men who are willing to marry a woman they do not care about merely because she is admired by other men. Such a relation exists between many men and their thoughts.

There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.

It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the menial side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law.

For the most part people are cruel, cruel if only from lack of thought.

Now came the question, what should I do? "Nothing," the correct thing, according to the governor. "Stand for the county," my mother suggested. "Go as attaché to my cousin, the envoy to St. Petersburg," my relatives opined, who had triumphed, with much unholy glory, over my rustication, as is the custom of relatives from time immemorial.

Polite lies, polite lies! They are the decorous garment, and the fitting food, of the world. To be in the fashion, I shall have to treat you to them before I have done.

Society, like most fashionable dames, is fond of selfdelusion, and is very apt to break in shivers the mirror that reflects her decolletee too faithfully. Now, the novelist is a painter who draws his portrait on canvas which a stone or two of censure will not break; but the playwright's fragile glass falls to atoms unless braced in a gilded frame of popularity. Critical hostility is often the breath of life to the writer; but to the actor it is absolute damnation