quotations about society
Under any system of society ... the family holds the future in its bosom.
CHARLES FRANKLIN THWING
The Family: An Historical and Social Study
Put me to sleep or take me away
I don't want to be a part of this sick society
NASUM
"Escape"
Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated it--have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I have done most of what is to be done, any lodge in a garden of cucumbers for me!
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12, 1845
No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Elizabeth Hitchener, July 25, 1811
When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.
M. E. THOMAS
Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
The Affluent Society
Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it.
MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS
The Monk
Society is the theatre, obligatory for the emancipation and development of the creative power in man. To reject social life is to deprive ourselves of the power of profiting by the experience of the past and the present.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man delights in society far more than do bees or herds.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
STEPHEN KING
The Stand
Through mistaken indulgence Society leads us to develop faults of character. These faults of character often lead us to grave errors. Then Society tries to correct those errors. The means society employs are sometimes far more severe than wise. They do far more harm than good. And even where Society, by the usual weapon of punishment, may correct or check or even destroy those errors, the cause of the errors remains. And the cause makes more errors. Even while Society is in the act of dealing with some of the more grave errors among her children, the cause is at work making more errors, perhaps as grave, perhaps graver.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Society: The Perfect Mother", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan.
JOHN STUART MILL
Dissertations and Discussions
Men living always in groups cooperate like the organs in an organism. Their actions have a common impulse and a common end. Their desires and opinions bear the common stamp of an impersonal direction. Much of their life is common to all. The roads, market-places and temples, are for each and all. The experiences, the dogmas, and the doctrines are for each and all. Customs arise, and are formulated in laws, the restraint of all. The customs, born of the circumstances, immanent in the social conditions, are consciously extricated and prescribed as the rules of life; each new generation is born in this social medium, and has to adapt itself to the established forms.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
Problems of Life and Mind
No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Those that angle in the waters of society catch only carps.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
We are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behavior.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
foreword, Sweet Bird of Youth
Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface. He, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
WASHINGTON IRVING
The Sketch Book
We are rated by normality
One shall never stand out
Personalities are deflated
During the first days in school
Belong to society by following the rules
Belong, with no way to choose
ROTTEN SOUND
"Follow"
Perfected by the offices and duties of social life, man is the best, but, rude and undisciplined, he is the very worst of animals.
ARISTOTLE
Politics