Human Society Quotes - Page 2

• If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed multitudes could neither be led nor governed - had been employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real empire of man, how different would have been the present situation of human society!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Art, Real, Army

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.269

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• Just as a human soul that faces great difficulties also faces great opportunities for spiritual growth, so a human society that faces destruction also faces the opportunity to enter a period of renaissance. I think that, barring an accident, the wish to survive will keep us from a nuclear war.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Spiritual, War, Thinking

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.105, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• Behind every rational and irrational force in human society there is a social mechanism which determines where it is to appear and what forms it is to take.

  Karl Mannheim

  Social, Form, Force

  Karl Mannheim (2013). “Man & Soc Age Reconstructn”, p.65, Routledge

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• Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

  Stephen King

  Home, Men, Opposites

  Stephen King (2008). “The Stand”, p.569, Anchor

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• Love will never be anywhere except where equality and unity are..... And there can be no love where love does not find equality or is not busy creating equality. Nor is there any pleasure without equality. Practice equality in human society. Learn to love, esteem, consider all people like yourself. What happens to another, be it bad or good, pain or joy, ought to be as if it happened to you.

  Meister Eckhart

  Pain, Practice, Creating

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• History is no easy science; its subject, human society, is inifinitely complex.

  Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

  Easy, Humans, Subjects

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• Villages are small and personal, and their inhabitants have names, characters, and personalities. What more appropriate concept on which to base our institutions of the future than the ancient social unit whose flexibility and strength substained human society through millenia?

  Charles Handy

  Character, Names, Personality

  "Gods of Management: The Changing Work of Organisations". Book by Charles Handy, 2011.

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• When love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods.

  Timothy Keller

  Racism, People, Hatred

  Timothy Keller (2009). “Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters”, p.60, Penguin

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• Our political way of life is by the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, and of course presupposes the existence of God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and government.

  John Quincy Adams

  Men, Law, Political

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• To realize lasting peace and sustainable development in human society, members of the international community have to cooperate with one another fully and make concerted efforts.

  Wu Bangguo

  Effort, Community, Development

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• If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.

  Pope Pius XI

  Christian, Religious, Errors

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• I think we are all interested in end-times ideas and also in the current climate that we are all living in, where money is a little harder to come by, things continue to get expensive; gas prices are not too far from people's heads. There are more and more people. Human society's going to have real problems.

  Dominic Monaghan

  Real, Thinking, Ideas

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• If we look at human society we see a place so difficult to live in because it is ruled by fear.

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Looks, Difficult, Humans

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• Human societies as temporally and spatially far-flung as the Mesopotamians, Mayans, and Easter Islanders likely came to ruin by expanding beyond the capacity of their environments to sustain them.

  William E. Rees

  Inspiring, Easter, Ruins

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• Something is not yet right and ripe in our human society at the beginning of the 21st century and third millennium: missing is an unprecedented vision, boldness and courage to fashion a new, promising, better future. Our beliefs, society, ways of life, institutions and future goals must be reviewed and reappraised fundamentally from scratch.

  Robert Muller

  Fashion, Goal, Missing

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• It crosses my mind that our generation may leave problems that are simply too hard for human society in the generations that follow. The structures that separate civilisation from disorder are thin and fragile. (But) I am not gloomy by nature so don't presume that the global community will fail the young people.

  Ross Garnaut

  Our Generation, People, Community

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• An ideal is an unselfish aspiration. Its purpose is the general welfare not only of this but of future generations. It is a thing of the spirit. It is a generous and humane desire that all men may share equally in a common good. Our ideals are the cement, which binds human society.

  Herbert Hoover

  Men, Desire, May

  United States. President (1929-1933 : Hoover), Herbert Hoover (1974). “Herbert Hoover: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President”

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• Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally. Nationalities should form the constitutive links in a great world alliance, and must be guaranteed an independent life in the realm of the spiritual and for locally delimited tasks, while economic and political objectives must be guided internationally in a spirit of peaceful cooperation for the promotion of mankind's common interests.

  Christian Lous Lange

  Spiritual, Independent, Civilization

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• Think how different human societies would be if they were based on love rather than justice. But no such societies have ever existed on earth.

  Mortimer Adler

  Thinking, Justice, Different

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• The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.

  Adrienne Rich

  Mean, Aquariums, Essentials

  Adrienne Rich (1976). “Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution”

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• Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.

  Wole Soyinka

  Firsts, Facts, Evolution

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Jan 23, 2015

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• Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. –The Grand Inquisitor

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Humans

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• All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.

  Edward Said

  Historical Knowledge, Data, Purpose

  Edward W. Said (2015). “Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World”, p.240, Vintage

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• If two people stare at each other for more than a few seconds, it means they are about to either make love or fight. Something similar might be said about human societies. If two nearby societies are in contact for any length of time, they will either trade or fight. The first is non-zero-sum social integration, and the second ultimately brings it.

  Robert Wright

  Zero, Mean, Fighting

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• Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.

  E. B. White

  Change, Dark, Clouds

  Letter to M. Nadeau, March 30, 1973.

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