Quotes About Society

To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society, as to quit everyone his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there, and there only, is a political or civil society. [....] Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men [e.g., Hobbes] is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all.

To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men's putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power.

No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do; I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society; unless any one will say, the state of nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm.

Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.

Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them … with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind, that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society, and that general fairness that cements mankind.

the law of the land, which is not to be violated.

Freedom of Men under Government, is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; A Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man.

We are all born slaves, and we must continue so;

El fin de la ley no es abolir o restringir, sino preservar y ampliar la libertad. Para todos los estados de seres creados, capaces de derecho, donde no hay ley, no hay libertad.

Por ser cada hombre, según se mostró, naturalmente libre, sin que nada alcance a ponerle en sujeción, bajo ningún poder de la tierra, como no sea su propio consentimiento

governments must be left again to the old way of being made by contrivance and the consent of men

To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to Heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men's putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature:

Freedom, then, is not what sir Robert Filmer tells us, O.A. 55, " a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws :" but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of the society

The great and cheif end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property; to which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting

Though it be ever so plain, that there ought to be government in the world

and by laws within themselves settled the properties of those of the same society

And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind

el disfrute de bienes en ese estado es muy inestable, en zozobra. Ello le hace desear el abandono de una condición que, aunque libre, llena está de temores y continuados peligros; y no sin razón busca y se une en sociedad con otros ya reunidos, o afanosos de hacerlo para esa mutua preservación de sus vidas, libertades y haciendas, a que doy el nombre general de propiedad.

Por "república" he entendido constantemente no una democracia ni cualquier otra forma de gobierno, sino cualquier comunidad independiente