Top 100 Society Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best society quotes ever written, picked out of the full society archive on QuoteForever. You will find Eric Hoffer, Henry David Thoreau, Karl Marx and Friedrich August Von Hayek among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

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.

2

We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.

3

A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.

4

Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.

5

There can be no question about whether we should or should not transform our society in the direction of sustainability.

6

When the nazis came to power, I looked to the universities that prided themselves upon their intellectual freedom, and they failed me. I looked to the German press, which prided itself on the freedom of the press, and it failed me. Until at last the churches stood alone, and that for which I once had little regard earned my respect.

7

Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.

8

If you dig deep and keep peeling the onion, artists and freelance writers are the leaders in society - the people who start to get new ideas out.

9

I believe discrimination still exists in society and we must fight it in every form.

10

We're living in a whole new social and economic order with a whole new set of problems and challenges. Old assumptions and old programs don't work in this new society and the more we try to stretch them to make them fit, the more we will be seen as running away from what is reality.

11

Society is a madhouse whose wardens are the officials and the police.

12

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

13

The mother's love for her child is very strong in Korean society - almost on the borderline of being an obsession.

14

There is nothing more fearful for the average person in our society than to stand before a group of people and speak.

15

No one can live entirely on their own, nor can any country or society exist in isolation.

16

When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities.

17

I wonder if, as a society, we will ever be able to call someone a jive tofurkey.

18

Coward is the most misused word in our society.

19

The fabric of society is woven together by the needle of suppression and denial.

20

It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.

21

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

22

We will be able to achieve a just and prosperous society only when our schools ensure that everyone commands enough shared background knowledge to be able to communicate effectively with everyone else.

23

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

24

Robert Kennedy was such an inspiring figure. His interest in politics seemed to come not from a desire for power, but from a need to help our society live up to its ideals.

25

The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.

26

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

27

In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

28

Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.

29

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.

30

Printing ballots in multiple languages costs millions of dollars every year. It also discourages immigrants from integrating into American society and gaining the benefits that come from speaking English.

31

The control man has secured over nature has far outrun his control over himself.

32

One reason--perhaps the chief--of the virility of the Roosevelts is [their] very democratic spirit. They have never felt that because they were born in a good position they could put their hands in their pockets and succeed. They have felt, rather, that being born in a good position, there is no excuse for them if they did not do their duty by the community.

33

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

34

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.

35

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.

36

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

37

Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.

38

Hyperbole expands in societies where articulateness atrophies.

39

We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.

40

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.

41

There are similarities between being an editor and a tailor. Tailors have a vast supply of fabrics, buttons and thread at their disposal and put it together to make a whole. That's what an editor does - looks at society at a given time and pulls together the interesting aspects into a single issue each month.

42

It isn't so much that hard times are coming; the change observed is mostly soft times going.

43

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

44

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

45

Free people make the only milieu possible in society for the full gift of one's self to church, state, and family. Free people enjoy and sustain and feel with one another because they live for one another. The paths of life are intermingled lives.

46

But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.

47

Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They've never found a society that did not have it.

48

I'm under the impression that this notion of decency is disappearing from our society where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the Internet and where, in general, everybody seems to be very angry.

49

It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at.

50

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.

51

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

52

Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground, one foot nailed to the floor.

53

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

54

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

55

Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society.

56

The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.

57

The sign of a good society is where talent is respected.

58

Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.

59

It is good for society to have this introspection.

60

These families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand.

61

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

62

The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.

63

What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.

64

If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.

65

Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.

66

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

67

He who negates present society, and seeks social conditions based on the sharing of property, is a revolutionary whether he calls himself an anarchist or a communist.

68

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

69

I never mingled with men, but I came home less of a man than I went out.

70

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

71

Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

72

Our society's values are being corrupted by advertising's insistence on the equation: youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness.

73

Society is always engaged in a vast conspiracy to preserve itself - at the expense of the new demands of each new generation.

74

There are plenty of people to whom the crucial problem of their lives never get presented in terms that they can understand.

75

You cannot criticize the New Testament. It criticizes you.

76

Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.

77

[The] men of the technostructure are the new and universal priesthood. Their religion is business success; their test of virtue is growth and profit. Their bible is the computer printout; their communion bench is the committee room.

78

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

79

My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak.

80

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

81

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.

82

Our democratic values also include - and our national security demands - open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects.

83

I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.

84

The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

85

I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.

86

To inflict cruelties on defenceless creatures, or condone such acts, is to abuse one of the cardinal tenets of a civilized society - reverence for life.

87

The negative side of football. The negative side of our society. People sometimes go to football and bring to it the negative aspects of our society.

88

The grand paradox of our society is this: we magnify man’s right but we minimize his capacities.

89

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

90

I mean, I am fully aware of my influence and my responsibility to society in general representing the gay community. But in the same time, I don't represent the entire gay community because it's a vast, vast community, as one can imagine.

91

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

92

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

93

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

94

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

95

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

96

The entertainment industry is vast and is a reflection of the society we live in.

97

As I grew up, I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.

98

There is nothing to be found in a beehive that is not submerged in a bee. And yet you can search a bee forever with cyclotron and fluoroscope, and you will never find the hive.

99

In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst.

100

In the mouth of Society are many diseased teeth, decayed to the bones of the jaws. But Society makes no effort to have them extracted and be rid of the affliction. It contents itself with gold fillings.

More Society quotes

This is the short list. The full society quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

Share This Page