quotations about society
Our societies are changing. It is no longer an atmosphere of repression that weighs upon us, that haunts our streets and our minds. It is the glossy, efficiency-minded atmosphere which is knocking the wind out of us. Literally, euphoria, dumping and acceleration are absorbing all the oxygen from the atmosphere and leaving us like washed-up fish. It is no longer light we are short of, nor cash, but air.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
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Cool Memories
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
The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning society's values, can force it to change.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Empire Star
Society is a great household, of which God is the Master.
JOHN STOUGHTON
Lights of the World
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
To me the progress of society consists in nothing more than in bringing out the individual, in giving him a consciousness of his own being, and in quickening him to strengthen and elevate his own mind.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
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
Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.
EURIPIDES
fragment, Phoemissae
Society is a hole
It makes me lie to my friends
It's running down my street
With white powers sneakers
On the beautiful beat of black feet
SONIC YOUTH
"Society Is a Hole"
An individual takes on significance only in his relationship to society as a whole.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
Society is like air; very high up, it is sublimated--too low down, a perfect chock-damp.
THOMAS PRUEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
We are too inattentive or too much occupied with ourselves to understand each other. Whoever has seen masks at a ball dance amicably together, and hold hands without knowing each other, to part the moment after to see each other no more, nor to regret each other, can form some idea of society.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Society, To all the leaders it's a game and it's making you insane
Society, Data patterns are supplied proof tap back up all the lies
Hardly alive
Society, Pay your taxes stand in line help them plan for your demise.
PENNYWISE
"Society"
Society is the mother of us all.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"The Perfect Mother", Reactions and Other Essays
Man becomes so accustomed to the society in which he has passed his life, that its institutions, laws, and customs grow upon him until they become a second nature; his feelings, views, and prejudices are so interwoven with its whole mechanism, that he looks upon it as natural, unchangeable, and perfect. So great is his illusion, that the evils he labours under, are attributed to every cause but the true one--the defective organization of society; and while the government, the administration, and even religion are doubted and criticized, the social system, as if it were some thing superior to human imperfection and error, alone commands the respect and reverence of all.
ALBERT BRISBANE
Social Destiny of Man: Or, Association and Reorganization of Industry
In human society the warmth is mainly at the bottom.
NOEL JACK COUNHIAN
Age
Man is a social being, and needs society and laws regulating social intercourse between states, tribes, and nations, as much as between individuals.
WILLIAM H. SEWARD
William H. Seward's Travels Around the World
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Time Enough for Love
The greatest benefactor to society is not he who serves it by single acts, but whose general character is the manifestation of a higher life and spirit than pervades the mass.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Society ... should be viewed only as a titled harlot, elegant and fascinating as a Circe, but false and treacherous as a serpent; agreeable enough to pass an idle hour with, but fatal the moment we give it credit for sincerity, and seek a closer intimacy.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos