Quotes About Society

Adam's children, being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently free : for law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation, as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law:

cualquiera que sea la forma adoptada por la república, debería el poder dirigente gobernar por leyes declaradas y bien recibidas y no por dictados repentinos y resoluciones indeterminadas, porque entonces se hallarían los hombres en harto peor condición que en el estado de naturaleza

where there is no law, there is no freedom;

positive laws of an established government.

You hear gun control advocates say all the time "guns kill people." And you hear a lot of Second Amendment advocates say "no, people kill people." But what you have to understand, and what you will understand after reading this book, is: gun control kills people.

Americans use guns defensively about 2 million times a year — about 5 times more frequently than guns are used to commit crimes.

Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that. Those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.

The fear, not the disease, threatened to break the society apart.

For the influenza pandemic that erupted in 1918 was the first great collision between nature and modern science. It was the first great collision between a natural force and a society that included individuals who refused either to submit to that force or to simply call upon divine intervention to save themselves from it, individuals who instead were determined to confront this force directly, with a developing technology and with their minds.

In a truly free society, people in every field would be free to express their views whether called religious or not, and the marketplace of ideas would be free to sort them out.

One of these photos stuck in my mind—that of elegant upper-class Parisians returning to the French capital after their armies had crushed the Paris Commune during Bloody Week (May 21–28, 1871). They applauded the terror organized by the French state, which had crushed Parisians aspiring to freedom.

Civilization: a thin veneer over barbarianism.

The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.

The problem isn't how to make the world more technological. It's about how to make the world more humane again.

Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.

If you look at things that really affect people's lives - sport, the arts, charities - they were always at the back of the queue for government money - health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas - sports, the arts, the lottery - got relatively petty cash from the government.

What will happen if our labor is no longer needed? If jobs for warehouse workers, garbage collectors, doctors, lawyers, and journalists are displaced by technology?

A free society's best defence against unethical behaviour modification is public disclosure and awareness.

Human laws, moral laws, religious laws, they seemed artificial and basic, almost childlike.

Law obviously existed because of a desire to lessen the quantum of suffering in a society. And yet law could only be said to exist where its enforcers had the power and will to inflict harm. Law, then, was not the setting of good against evil; it merely authorized the use of some kinds of evil to combat others. Moreover, Austin's theory located the law's authority in the

Unfortunately, though, even in our own time, the stigma that can attach to the cleverest person in the room sometimes intensifies if that person happens to be a woman. To imagine that Fuller could conduct herself as she did and never run afoul of gender prejudice is fanciful. To suppose that such biases were alone responsible for her troubles is equally so.

Look, demanding somebody do anything in this day and age is not going to fly.

We're still waiting, waiting, waiting on the world to change.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.