Quotes About Society

the only differences between a cult and a religion are the numbers of adherents and the degree to which they are marginalized by the rest of society. Scientology

At this point in their history, give most Muslims the freedom to vote, and they will freely vote to tear out their political freedoms by the root.

Well, let's make it simpler. Let's say we found a culture on an island somewhere that was removing the eyeballs of every third child. Would you then agree that we had found a culture that was not perfectly maximizing human well-being?

what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it.

One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless. 

Life under the Taliban is, to a first approximation, what millions of Muslims around the world want to impose on the rest of us. They long to establish a society in which—when times are good—women will remain vanquished and invisible, and anyone given to spiritual, intellectual, or sexual freedom will be slaughtered before crowds of sullen, uneducated men.

Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral….

You start with a given: free enterprise is the engine of our society; communism is pretty much down the drain and proven so; and there doesn't appear to be anything else that can compare to a free society based on a market economy

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation.

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

It is observed that "a corrupt society has many laws;" I know not whether it is not equally true, that "an ignorant age has many books." When the treasures of ancient knowledge lie unexamined, and original authors are neglected and forgotten, compilers and plagiaries are encouraged, who give us again what we had before, and grow great by setting before us what our own sloth had hidden from our view.

He that can only converse upon questions about which only a small part of mankind has knowledge sufficient to make them curious must lose his days in unsocial silence, and live in the crowd of life without a companion.

So much are the modes of excellence settled by time and place, that men may be heard boasting in one street of that which they would anxiously conceal in another.

The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion.

I am not apt to run into grave declamations against the times:

He has travelled. But is not human nature the same in every country, allowing only for different customs? — Do not Love, hatred, anger, malice, all the passions in short, good or bad, shew themselves by like effects in the faces, hearts,  and actions of the people of every country?

Ah, Sir, said she, a man of your observation must know, that the daughters of a decayed family of some note in the world, do not easily get husbands. Men of great fortunes look higher: Men of small must look out for wives to enlarge them; and men of genteel businesses are afraid of young women better born than portioned. Every-body knows not that my girls can bend to their condition; and they must be contented to live single all their lives;

The vanity of the Sex, said he, will not suffer any thing of this sort to escape our Harriet. Women, continued he, make themselves so cheap at the public places, in and about town, that new faces are more enquired after than even fine faces constantly seen. Harriet has an honest artless bloom in her cheeks; she may attract notice as a novice:

As for mothers, many of them are for escorting their daughters to public places, because they themselves like racketing.

No-body, it seems, thinks of an husband for Miss Barnevelt. She is sneeringly spoken of rather as a young fellow, than as a woman; and who will one day look out for a wife for herself. One reason indeed, she every-where gives, for being satisfied with being a woman; which is, that she cannot be married to a WOMAN.

Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect, as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired, the latter are followed.