Society Quotes - Page 5

• No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

  Adam Smith

  Happiness, Equality, Politics

  Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.33

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• Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Witty, Book

  Lady Windermere's Fan act 3 (1892)

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• Reality is always controlled by the people who are the most insane.

  Scott Adams

  Reality, People, Insane

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• We are born charming fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.

  Judith Martin

  Positive, Belief, Fit

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• We can never get a re-creation of community and heal our society without giving our citizens a sense of belonging.

  Patch Adams

  Inspiring, Giving, Community

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• When a society is organized around that which is fitting in each realm, then peace, the fruit of justice, can flourish.

  Leonardo Boff

  Justice, Fruit, Fitting

  Leonardo Boff (2001). “The Prayer of Saint Francis: A Message of Peace for the World Today”, p.44, Orbis Books

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• The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.

  John Dewey

  Change, Education, Mean

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.96, Courier Corporation

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• Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help.

  Nhat Hanh

  Buddhist, Meditation, Vision

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• We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named fair competition and so forth, it is a mutual hostility.

  Thomas Carlyle

  War, Law, Competition

  Thomas Carlyle (1843). “Past and Present”, p.87

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• We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born - a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.

  Dee Hock

  Nature, Struggle, Years

  "The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock". Interview with M. Mitchell Waldrop, www.fastcompany.com. October 31, 1996.

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• For piety lies not in being often seen turning a veiled head to stones, nor in approaching every altar, nor in lying prostratebefore the temples of the gods, nor in sprinkling altars with the blood of beastsbut rather in being able to look upon all things with a mind at peace.

  Lucretius

  Lying, Blood, Mind

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• Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

  John W. Gardner

  Relationship, People, Kind

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• In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed... It means facing a system that does not lend its self to your needs and devising means by which you change that system.

  Ella Baker

  Meaningful, Self, Order

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• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

  Frederick Douglass

  Peace, Patriotic, Ignorance

  Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1886

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• Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Law, Cities

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• Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Class, Two, Shearer

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• Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Foolish, Young, Persons

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• Society is a hospital of incurables.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hospitals

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.410, Modern Library

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• We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.

  Lin Yutang

  People, Impossible, Should

  Yutang Lin (1936). “My country and my people”

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• You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches.

  Frank Deford

  Beach, Animal, Needs

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• Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue.

  Billy Joel

  Lonely, Honesty, Insanity

  Song: Honesty, Album: 52nd Street, 1978

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• A new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.

  Nelson Mandela

  Past, Refined, Reproducing

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations”, p.265, Pan Macmillan

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• Society is not merely a select body of spiritual or intellectual persons, but a great organism composed of all kinds of members, a net containing bad and good.

  Robert Hugh Benson

  Spiritual, Intellectual, Body

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• Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

  Edmund Burke

  Liberty, Appetite, Virtuous

  Edmund Burke (1791). “A Letter from Mr. Burke, to a Member of the National Assembly: In Answer to Some Objections to His Book on French Affairs”, p.69

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• When the perfect order prevails, the world is like a home shared by all. Leaders are capable and virtuous. Everyone loves and respects their own parents and children as well as the parents and children of others. The old are cared for, adults have jobs, children are nourished and educated. There is a means of support for all those who are disabled or find themselves alone in the world. Everyone has an appropriate role to play in the family and society. Devotion to public duty leaves no place for idleness. Scheming for ill gain is unknown. Sharing displaces selfishness and materialism.

  Confucius

  Inspirational, Motivational, Jobs

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