Best 3026 quotes in «society quotes» category

But the individual was not a tool for something. He was the maker of tools. He was the one who must build. Even for the best purpose it is criminal to turn an individual into simply a means for some ultimate end. A society in which the dignity of the individual is destroyed cannot hope to be a decent society.

Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling to what they have in beliefs, ideas and possessions. The sterile radical, too, is basically conservative. He is afraid to let go of the ideas and beliefs he picked up in his youth lest his life be seen as empty and wasted.

Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.

Cosmic reveries separate us from project reveries. They situate us in a world and not in a society. The cosmic reverie possesses a sort of stability or tranquility. It helps us escape time. It is a state.

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results.

Democracy is not just a question of having a vote. It consists of strengthening each citizen's possibility and capacity to participate in the deliberations involved in life in society.

Ensuring the access of all citizens to government information and to essential information for human development is a must for every democratic society.

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.

Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve, because we all benefit from society.

Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities, in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those affected in the first instance will require further adjustments that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every change thus in a sense creates a "problemfor society, even though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually "solvedby the establishment of a new overall adjustment.

Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

Every step by which an individual substitutes concerted action for isolated action results in an immediate and recognizable improvement in his conditions. The advantages derived from peaceful cooperation and division of labor are universal.

Freedom can be destroyed, not just by its retraction, but also by its abuse.

Evolution as such is no longer a theory for a modern author. It is as much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

General jackdaw culture, very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions, untargeted enthusiasms, and a general habit of skimming.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Human society is made up of partialities. Each citizen has an interest and a view of his own, which, if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room for any other citizen.

I always trust the microcosm over the macrocosm.

I believe that one of the great problems for us as individuals is the depression and the tension resulting from existence in a world which is increasingly less pleasing to the eye.

I believe that the basic attribute of mankind is to look after each other

I divide the world into three Classes - The few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.

I feel sure that coups d'état would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

If experience teaches anything, it is that what the community undertakes to do is usually done badly. This is due in part to the temptation to corruption that such enterprises involve, but even more, perhaps, to the lack of personal interest on the part of those engaged in them.

If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.

If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

if we don't begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one?

I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.

If you really want to define civilization it should be a culture that doesn't destroy its environment. If you burn down the kitchen one day and expect to eat the next, it is not even intelligent, let alone civilized.

If you think that someone is out to steal everything you have, you're either paranoid or a member of the middle class.

If you want a strong society, it has to be inclusive. If you have to push a boulder up a hill, do you want 10 people or 100? If you weed out colour or gender, you get 10.

I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.

Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.

If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through.

In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.

I must try to live in society and yet remain untouched by its pitfalls.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Individuals learn faster than institutions and it is always the dinosaur's brain that is the last to get the new messages.

Industrial societies can only be run successfully by dictators or oligarchs.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.

In societies where modern conditions of productions prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation. The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be re-established. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation . . . The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.