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Society quotes

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“People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Society is no comfort to one not sociable.” William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

“Anything we want, we're trained to want.” Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.” Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by laxity of morals amongst all.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

“Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital

“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.” Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.” Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital

“We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” Pope Francis, Laudato si'

“what is reality? . . . It’s whatever the majority deems it to be. It’s not necessarily the best or the most logical, but it’s the one that supports the desires of society as a whole.” Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again!” Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea

“What I condemn are our system of values and the men who don't acknowledge how great, difficult, but ultimately beautiful women's share in society is.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Yet command and obedience are but unfortunate necessities of human life: society in equality is its normal state.” John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

“She belonged to that one of the two divisions of the human race in which the untiring curiosity which the other half feels about the people whom it does not know is replaced by an unfailing interest in the people whom it does.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address

“A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.” Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“For a closed society is not open to ideas of progress—and a police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.” John F. Kennedy, State of the Union Address

“No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon...” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“I'm 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 had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one” Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.” Aristotle, Politics

“Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop.” C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Yes, the money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilisation. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than...” Franklin D. Roosevelt, Looking Forward

“Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.” Pope Francis, Laudato si'

“With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know.” Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.” G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

“It is a good lesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are...” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Worse than all, you are candid, and it often happens that our happiness depends on certain social hypocrisies to which you will never stoop.” Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides

“I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that—categories like that—won't exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will...” Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.” Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me poor indeed.” William Shakespeare, Othello

“Among unequals what society can sort, what harmony, or true delight?” John Milton, Paradise Lost

“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“Ah! by Jove! one’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

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Related topics

mirror progress morality knowledge individuality freedom environment escape friendship happiness loneliness education solitude value hypocrisy women life love self wealth

Related authors

Henry David Thoreau (2)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2)
Charlotte Brontë (1)
Pope Francis (3)
Jean-Paul Sartre (2)
Thomas Paine (2)
William Shakespeare (2)
Oscar Wilde (2)
Aldous Huxley (2)
Ayn Rand (2)
Jane Austen (2)
John F. Kennedy (2)
Karl Marx (2)
Adam Smith (2)
Honoré de Balzac (2)
G. K. Chesterton (1)
Anne Frank (1)
Chuck Palahniuk (1)
Mark Twain (1)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)

Related sources

Laudato si' (3)
Brave New World (2)
State of the Union Address (2)
Self-Reliance (2)
The Fountainhead (2)
Walden (2)
Das Kapital (2)
The Wealth of Nations (2)
Letters of Two Brides (2)
Common Sense (2)
Nausea (2)
The Diary of a Young Girl (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Ham on Rye (1)
Cymbeline (1)
The Age of Innocence (1)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
The Social Contract (1)
The Little Prince (1)