Quotes About Society

Everyone says she's mad.' 'How do they know?' I asked. 'Because she's different from other people, I suppose.' 'Is that being mad?' 'No. Not really, I suppose madness is not seeing things as others see them.

The monkey population is definitely on the increase, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day it exceeds the human population. Of course, the way things are going, a time may come when we won't be able to distinguish between monkeys and humans. Monkeys are becoming more human, while humans are becoming more like monkeys. Summer

I had always considered it an admirable thing to break away from security and respectability. Of course, it is easier for a man to do this. A man can look after himself, he can do without neighbours and the approval of the local society. A woman, I reasoned, would do anything for love provided it was not at the price of security; for a woman loves security as much as a man loves independence.

Rebellious schoolboys are unwelcome in a technologically advanced, moralistic, exam-oriented society. We prefer a polished Bill Gates to an eccentric Einstein. Eccentrics do unpredictable things, and we have become afraid of the unpredictable.

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.

Have you been out in society recently? 'Cause it's SHIT.

It's like Kilroy only talking about Big Brother and there's no racism allowed.

In the US case, the best constitution was one that left the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian visions to be fought out in the economy rather than in the polity

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

Tradition is a guide to the permanent qualities in society and thought and private life which need to be preserved in one form or another, throughout the process of inevitable change.

The true natural rights of men, then, are equal justice, security of labor and property, the amenities of civilized institutions, and the benefits of orderly society.

Ordinary human laws are the means -- however imperfect -- by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

Now in truth our society is not a "capitalist system" at all, but a complex cultural and social arrangement that comprehends religion, morals, prescriptive political institutions, literary culture, a competitive economy, private property, and much more besides. It is not a system designed to secure and advance the interests of great possessors of capital goods unjustly acquired.

Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors...they are dubious of wholesale alteration. They think society is a spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution: it cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine

Having thus disposed in his merciless way of an incautious adversary, Randolph proceeded to expose the follies of seeking abstract harmony in government, of expecting the great venerable Gothic edifice of society to conform to ideal classical proportions; with Burke, he believed that a state is better governed by the irregular patterns formed by common sense and tradition than by the laws of mathematics and the Procrustean methods of omnipotent majorities.

They offer few alternatives to the alleged benefits of the Welfare State, shrugging their shoulders; and the creed of most of them is no better than a latter-day Utilitarianism

Worse still, what future have a people whose schooling has enabled them, at best, to ascertain the price of everything—but the value of nothing?

In America, the Federal Constitution has endured as the most sagacious conservative document in political history

My argument is this: unless we begin to think of humanizing our American economy, our cities will continue to disintegrate, and the American people increasingly will grow bored and violent.

When a society is advancing in some respects, usually it is declining in others.

And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence has prepared man. If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.

Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individual, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.