Quotes About Society

No social stability without individual stability.

I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then, he added in a lower tone, I ate my own wickedness.

That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.

Chastity—the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions, he added parenthetically, out of Remy de Gourmont .

Did you eat something that didn't agree with you? asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. I ate civilization.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.

But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.

Our civilisation being what it is, you've got to spent eight hours out of every twenty-four as a mixture between an imbecile and a sewing machine. It's very disagreeable, I know. It's humiliating and disgusting. But there you are. You've got to do it, otherwise the whole fabric of our world will fall to bits and we'll starve. Do the job then, idiotically and mechanically; and spend your leisure hours in being a real complete man or woman.

Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.

The function of the well-intentioned individual, acting in isolation, is to formulate or disseminate theoretical truths. The function of the well-intentioned individuals in association is to live in accordance with those truths, to demonstrate what happens when theory is translated into practice, to create small-scale working models of the better form of society to which the speculative idealist looks forward.

The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.

All right then, said the Savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude.

Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence

This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country´s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of W. Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by few.

But, Bernard, you're saying the most awful things.' 'Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?' 'I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays.' He laughed, 'Yes, Everybody's happy nowadays. We begin giving children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to e happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way.

The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones.

Whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.

But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?' asked the Savage indignantly. 'Why don't you give them these books about God?' 'For the same reason as we don't give them Othello: they're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now.' 'But God doesn't change.' 'Men do, though.' 'What difference does that make?' All the difference in the world,' said Mustapha Mond.

The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity

But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.

Religious beliefs and practices are certainly not the only factors determining the behaviour of a given society. But, no less certainly, they are among the determining factors. At least to some extent, the collective conduct of a nation is a test of the religion prevailing within it, a criterion by which we may legitimately judge the doctrinal validity of that religion and its practical efficiency in helping individuals to advance towards the goal of human existence.

There was something called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal.