quotations about society
Man delights in society far more than do bees or herds.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Through mistaken indulgence Society leads us to develop faults of character. These faults of character often lead us to grave errors. Then Society tries to correct those errors. The means society employs are sometimes far more severe than wise. They do far more harm than good. And even where Society, by the usual weapon of punishment, may correct or check or even destroy those errors, the cause of the errors remains. And the cause makes more errors. Even while Society is in the act of dealing with some of the more grave errors among her children, the cause is at work making more errors, perhaps as grave, perhaps graver.
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
The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power or means to coerce others.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Society is all around
Aw, hear the beautiful sound
Of all the high-pitched squeals
Ecstatic brilliance at its finest
KURT VILE
"Society Is My Friend"
We are rated by normality
One shall never stand out
Personalities are deflated
During the first days in school
Belong to society by following the rules
Belong, with no way to choose
ROTTEN SOUND
"Follow"
It happens from time to time in every complex and active society, that certain persons feel the complexity and insistence as a tangle, and seek freedom in retirement, as Thoreau sought at Walden Pond. They do not, however, in this manner escape from the social institutions of their time, nor do they really mean to do so; what they gain, if they are successful, is a saner relation to them.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
As long as men are men, a poor society cannot be too poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too rich to have need to seek it.
R. H. TAWNEY
The Acquisitive Society
Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it.
MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS
The Monk
Now hear this
This is a warning to the slack society
Release the pressure
Fabulous
Now watch this
Charge
Attack Attack Attack
It's all over
ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION
"Charge"
Now, the vicissitudes that afflict the individual have their source in society. It is this situation that has given currency to the phrase "social forces". Personal relations have given way to impersonal ones. The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control. The study of how it is to be done is the function of politics.
ANEURIN BEVAN
In Place of Fear
Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.
EURIPIDES
fragment, Phoemissae
Perfected by the offices and duties of social life, man is the best, but, rude and undisciplined, he is the very worst of animals.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated it--have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I have done most of what is to be done, any lodge in a garden of cucumbers for me!
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12, 1845
Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
STEPHEN KING
The Stand
Society is a great household, of which God is the Master.
JOHN STOUGHTON
Lights of the World
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"
No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Men living always in groups cooperate like the organs in an organism. Their actions have a common impulse and a common end. Their desires and opinions bear the common stamp of an impersonal direction. Much of their life is common to all. The roads, market-places and temples, are for each and all. The experiences, the dogmas, and the doctrines are for each and all. Customs arise, and are formulated in laws, the restraint of all. The customs, born of the circumstances, immanent in the social conditions, are consciously extricated and prescribed as the rules of life; each new generation is born in this social medium, and has to adapt itself to the established forms.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
Problems of Life and Mind
Society is like air; very high up, it is sublimated--too low down, a perfect chock-damp.
THOMAS PRUEN
attributed, Day's Collacon