Quotes About Society

unlike Virgil, Homer is no part of the classical age, has no truck with judicious distinction or the calm management of life and society. He precedes that order, is a preclassic, immoderate, uncompromising, never sacrificing truth for grace.

At that level through out the 18th century, another vision of admirable behavior persisted. The mob did not want the smooth conformable man, the slick hypocrite who could so politely maneuver his way into the rewards of high politics and high society. They wanted his very opposite, the clever thief. The man who thrived not by using the well oiled wheels of society but by opposing them and cheating them; by attending to the well-being of his own heroic self.

psychoanalysis is an account of how and why modern people are so frightened of each other. What

It is, of course, Wilde's point that socialism interferes with sociability.

It is surprising how much disruption the structure of normal life can absorb and still keep functioning. But then again, considered mathematically, society has never been an assemblage of things so much as an assemblage of variables.

I don't recall all twelve points of the Great Animal Charter, but I know that the right to vote, to work, the right to welfare benefits and the creation of a set number of specifically animal MPs and MEPs was part of it. It was never going to happen, of course. I don't suppose the animals believed it would pass; their intention was to provoke dissension amongst humanity.

Nationalism, racism, and other toxic prejudices likewise corrode our own global society. We live in a world in which slavery has not been eradicated and, if we are not vigilant, may again flourish under a new dispensation of global inequality.16

a society dependent on plantation slavery could not defend itself. "This Country is strong by Nature," the committee asserted, "but extremely weak from the nature of its population

One assiduous historian has recently estimated that approximately 170,000 slaves were introduced into North America between 1783 and 1810, with more than 100,000 of these arriving in the first decade of the nineteenth century.

The second point is that the world in which we live is shaped by us, by our practices and culture, by our very existence, and our DNA responds to that in turn. Genes change culture, culture changes genes.

We are the only animal that cooks.

There are no essential genetic elements for any particular group of people who might be identified as a "race." As far as genetics is concerned, race does not exist.

from the point of view of a geneticist, race does not exist. It has no useful scientific value.

That, of course, does not mean the racism doesn't exist.

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense…. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.

By pursuing his own interest (every individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.

The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition... is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

As billionaire investor Warren Buffett famously put it: "Actually, there's been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won.

When man lives under government, he is fallen, his worth is gone, and his nature tarnished.

Educate a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community.