quotations about society
Society is a sphere that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
In his long evolutionary history, man has scored few greater successes than his creation of human society. For it is on that primeval achievement that he has built those special qualities of mind and of behaviour which, in his own view at least, separate him from lower forms of life. If we sometimes tend to overlook this fact it is only because we have lived so long under the protective ambience of society that we have come to take its benefits for granted.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Society's failed us, Society's gonna pay
One way or another they'll feel our pain
ROGER MIRET & THE DISASTERS
"The Boys"
The man who lives alone is apt to forget the individuality of others; the man who lives in society is apt to forget his own.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
OSCAR WILDE
An Ideal Husband
Sanity means the wholeness of the consciousness.
And our society is only part conscious, like an idiot.
D. H. LAWRENCE
"Nemesis"
Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.
MARGARET THATCHER
interview, Woman's Own, October 31, 1987
And therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary bereft of all society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the man, but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might derive from one man.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
I'm just the subject of discussion now
The one no-one admires
I'm society's victim
I'm not just sufferin' from paranoia
It's invented by you and them
DISCHARGE
"Society's Victim"
There is a society in the deepest solitude.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
Literary Character of Men of Genius
Gold is the key to society; but poverty its barrier.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
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
In society men protect themselves by protecting one another.
EMPEROR FOHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
Those who suffer their happiness to depend on the futile pleasures of society, instead of the resources of their own minds, resemble birds, who, with the power of soaring into the pure regions of the sky, descend, and loiter amid the dust of the earth, at the risk of being snared or destroyed by every vagrant urchin.
LADY BLESSINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
If you really wish to become a man of society, you must learn first either to be an imbecile or to hold your tongue.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid