quotations about society
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
EMILY BRONTË
Wuthering Heights
Side by side and always tired
All for one and no-one hired
All that's left is love inspired
Low society
HEAVEN 17
"Low Society"
As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
I suppose Society is wonderfully delightful.
To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
OSCAR WILDE
A Woman of No Importance
No social stability without individual stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Society is the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a school and a theatre, the spur and the crown of ambition, and the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit.
WENDELL PHILLIPS
Fraternity Lecture, October 4, 1859
A participation in rights and advantages forms the bond of political society; an institution prior, in the intention of nature, to the families and individuals from whom it is constituted.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Gold is the key to society; but poverty its barrier.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Individual societies begin in harmonious adaptation to the environment and, like individuals, quickly get trapped into nonadaptive, artificial, repetitive sequences. When the individual's behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to "drop out," "turn on," and "tune in."
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Politics of Ecstasy
The earth is much over-populated, hence that abominable institution called "Society."
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Without some portion of moral virtues, not even thieves can maintain society.
J. HARRIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
It may be that our society is only passing through a period of ugly transition, but the present evil has its root deep down in the social organization, and springs from a diseased public opinion.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
"A Chapter of Erie", North American Review, July 1869
What a glorious time it will be when Society discovers that most of the punishment it inflicts ought not to have been inflicted on its children, but on itself.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Society: The Perfect Mother", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Making something out of nothing
With punk we have a start
You can see it in our faces
We're here to kick society's ass
THE CASUALTIES
"Sell Out Society"
Society is a chain of obligations, and its links must support each other;
The branch cannot but wither, that is cut from the parent vine.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Society is immoral and immortal; it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice; it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses