quotations about society
Man must have some recognized stake in society and affairs to knit him lovingly to his kind, or he is wont to revenge himself for wrongs real or imagined.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Society therefore is as ancient as the world.
VOLTAIRE
A Philosophical Dictionary
I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
EMILY BRONTË
Wuthering Heights
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk
Justice is the great end of civil society.
DAVID DUDLEY FIELD
speech, March 1885
Society is addicted to growth, and that's having terrible consequences for the planet and, increasingly, for us as well. We have to change our collective and individual behavior and give up something we depend on--power over our environment. We must restrain ourselves, like an alcoholic foreswearing booze. That requires honesty and soul-searching.
RICHARD HEINBERG
"Systemic Change Driven by Moral Awakening Is Our Only Hope", EcoWatch, August 14, 2017
That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
ERICH FROMM
The Sane Society
Put me to sleep or take me away
I don't want to be a part of this sick society
NASUM
"Escape"
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
A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one--
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than they all.
ROBERT BROWNING
Luria
Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Coming of Age
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
A society composed of none but the wicked could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and without a flood, would be swept away from the earth by the deluge of its own iniquity.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Every society has the criminals it deserves.
EMMA GOLDMAN
Red Emma Speaks
Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.
KARL MARX
The Communist Manifesto
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
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
Society is all around
Aw, hear the beautiful sound
Of all the high-pitched squeals
Ecstatic brilliance at its finest
KURT VILE
"Society Is My Friend"
Society is divided into two classes--the shearers and the shorn; we should always be with the former against the latter.
NAPOLEON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Those that angle in the waters of society catch only carps.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought