Quotes About Society

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

Where tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

The Western world, he believed, was afflicted by the curse of short-term thinking, the inevitable result of democracy.

If previous generations of women were raised to believe that they could only realise themselves within the roles of wife and mother, now the opposite is thought true: It is only outside these roles that we are able to realise our full potential and worth as human beings.

Because we have accepted the view that there is a trade-off between equality and liberty, we think we have to choose. Lately, we have come, as a people, to choose liberty.

What if the real threat posed to society and democracy is not actually posed by the other side? What if the real danger is posed by political and media elites who try to get us to think that we'd be better off without the other side and who use these divisions for their own personal, financial, political benefit?

It was 8am. My phone was ringing. What kind of society do we live in where someone can make your phone ring at 8am? There should be rules.

Un pays n'est jamais corrompu, ce sont ses dirigeants qui peuvent l'être.

On se sert même du cynisme pour ne pas crever de honte.

much privilege leads to bad manners

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. —ALBERT CAMUS

But where do we come up with this notion of a woman in which the less space you take up, the more you're worth?

It is a truism that motherhood makes many women feminist.

Every artistic expression is either influenced by or adds something to politics.

A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.

Black women are survivors. They have developed values over almost four centuries that actually seem to work. At a time when the problems of our society often seem insoluble and the obstacles to peace and freedom seem insurmountable, all Americans have a great deal to learn from black women.

Politics is the process by which a society chooses the rules that will govern it.

A remarkable thing about new technologies in the Roman period is that their creation and spread seem to have been driven by the state. This is good news, until the government decides that it is not interested in technological development—and all-too-common occurrence due to the fear of creative destruction.

Whether it is North Korea, Sierra Leone, or Zimbabwe, well show that poor countries are poor for the same reason that Egypt is poor. Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities.

We call such institutions, which have opposite properties to those we call inclusive, extractive economic institutions—extractive because such institutions are designed to extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset.

Inclusive economic institutions require secure property rights and economic opportunities not just for the elite but for a broad cross-section of society.