quotations about society
Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Look around you: what you have done to society, you have done it first within your soul; one is the image of the other. This dismal wreckage, which is now your world, is the physical form of the treason you committed to your values, to your friends, to your defenders, to your future, to your country, to yourself.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
In his long evolutionary history, man has scored few greater successes than his creation of human society. For it is on that primeval achievement that he has built those special qualities of mind and of behaviour which, in his own view at least, separate him from lower forms of life. If we sometimes tend to overlook this fact it is only because we have lived so long under the protective ambience of society that we have come to take its benefits for granted.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Society is a sphere that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
If you really wish to become a man of society, you must learn first either to be an imbecile or to hold your tongue.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
In society men protect themselves by protecting one another.
EMPEROR FOHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Society's failed us, Society's gonna pay
One way or another they'll feel our pain
ROGER MIRET & THE DISASTERS
"The Boys"
I'm just the subject of discussion now
The one no-one admires
I'm society's victim
I'm not just sufferin' from paranoia
It's invented by you and them
DISCHARGE
"Society's Victim"
And therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary bereft of all society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the man, but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might derive from one man.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Our society is changing so rapidly that none of us can know what it is or where it is going.
EDWIN H. LAND
testimony, The Public Television Act of 1967: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Communications
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
OSCAR WILDE
An Ideal Husband
They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.
MARGARET THATCHER
interview, Woman's Own, October 31, 1987
There is a society in the deepest solitude.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
Literary Character of Men of Genius
Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
What a glorious time it will be when Society discovers that most of the punishment it inflicts ought not to have been inflicted on its children, but on itself.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Society: The Perfect Mother", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection.
FRANCIS BACON
Advancement of Learning
Gold is the key to society; but poverty its barrier.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs