Adam Smith
Philosopher, Economist
"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."
Society quotes
Society
565 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Ovid
Poet
"Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another."
Nelson Mandela
Political Leader
"The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Politician
"We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out."
Lewis Hine
Photographer
"There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work."
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Society quotes (page 1 of 29)
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"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless."
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"Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society."
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"What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses."
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"Behold then Septimus Dodge returning to Dodge-town victorious. Not crowned with laurel, it is true, but wreathed in lists of things he has seen and sucked dry. Seen and sucked dry, you know: Venus de Milo, the Rhine or the Coliseum: swallowed like so many clams, and left the shells."
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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."
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"Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears."
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"The layman's constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn't like is unconstitutional."
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"As a society, we've learned that we're all better off when everyone is included in the opportunities of this great nation."
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"Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual."
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"We are seeing the birth of a new perspective of the world, where ecology and economics are two sides of the same coin."
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"When the family is destroyed, society eventually disintegrates."
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"Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness."
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"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth."
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"When the nazis came to power, I looked to the universities that prided themselves upon their intellectual freedom, and they failed me. I looked to the German press, which prided itself on the freedom of the press, and it failed me. Until at last the churches stood alone, and that for which I once had little regard earned my respect."
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"Human society is made up of partialities. Each citizen has an interest and a view of his own, which, if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room for any other citizen."
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"A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill."
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"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
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"One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam."
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"We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy."
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"When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest."
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