Society Quotes

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  If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Success, Helping Others

  Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1961

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• Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

  Oscar Wilde

  Real, Individuality, World

  35 Copy quote

• Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.97, Chartwell

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

  Zig Ziglar

  Inspirational, God, Suggestions

  61 Copy quote
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  We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

  Carl Sagan

  Motivational, Education, Knowledge

  "Why We Need To Understand Science". The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3, www.csicop.org. Spring 1990.

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• Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Gains, Sides

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.59

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  Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

  John Adams

  Suicide, Freedom, Suicidal

  Letter from John Adams to John Taylor, 15 Apr. 1814

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• Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.

  Algernon Sidney

  Men, Fishes, Great Ones

  'Discourses concerning Government' (1698) ch. 2, sect. 18

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• My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Freedom, Patriotic, Independent

  Adlai E. Stevenson's speech in Detroit, Michigan, October 7, 1952.

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• American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.

  Henry Adams

  America, Water, Ponds

  Henry Adams (1938). “Letters of Henry Adams ...: 1892-1918”, New York, Houghton

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• It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.

  Jacques Barzun

  Morning, Fog, Long

  9 Copy quote

• Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Inspirational, Care, Individual

  11 Copy quote

• The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Wise, Fear, Bores You

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• Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.

  Barbara Jordan

  Food, Anger, Thinking

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• The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.

  A. J. Liebling

  Anger, Roles, Making Money

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• Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.

  C. Wright Mills

  Anger, Understanding, Individual

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.3, Oxford University Press

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• I think this society suffers so much from too much freedom, too many rights that allow people to be irresponsible.

  Boyd Rice

  Anger, Thinking, Rights

  58 Copy quote

• The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Truth, Freedom, Liberty

  Henrik Ibsen (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (Illustrated)”, p.1935, Delphi Classics

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• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Reality, Self

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.21, Coyote Canyon Press

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• Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Funny, Class, Two

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

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• Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Character, Balls

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.119, Harvard University Press

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• What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Mosaics, Literature, Caricatures

  "Aphorisms from the Athenaeum" by Friedrich Schlegel, #5, 1798.

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• Society in shipwreck is comfort to all.

  Publilius Syrus

  Comfort, Shipwreck

  "The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave: From the Latin". Book by Darius Lyman. Maxim 144, 1856.

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• The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

  Orson Welles

  Inspirational, Funny, Birthday

  Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich (1992). “This is Orson Welles”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

  Will Rogers

  Funny, Life, Change

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling (1988). “The Will Rogers scrapbook”, Random House Value Publishing

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