Society quotes
565 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside society — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is the sort we intend."
"The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age."
"Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant."
"Men are lead by trifles."
"I must try to live in society and yet remain untouched by its pitfalls."
"Man was formed for society."
"He that fancies such a sufficiency in himself that he can live without all the world is greatly mistaken; but he that imagines himself so necessary that other people cannot live without him is a great deal more mistaken."
"Life in a free society...is heaven on earth to life in a socialist society such as Russia."
"Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims."
"We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it."
"I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live."
"In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so."
"I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports."
"I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are."
"I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely."
"It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at."
"A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on."
"You can't make a life over. Society wouldn't let you if you would."
"Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body."
"As soon as you are in a social setting, you better take away the key to the lock of your heart and pocket it; those who leave thekey in the lock are fools."
