Society - Quotes

A picture is made up of so many square inches of painted canvas; but if you should look at these one at a time, covering the others, until you had seen them all, you would still not have seen the picture. There may, in all such cases, be a system or organization in the whole that is not apparent in the parts. In this sense, and in no other, is there a difference between society and the individuals of which it is composed; a difference not residing in the facts themselves but existing to the observer on account of the limits of his perception. A complete view of society would also be a complete view of all the individuals, and vice versa; there would be no difference between them. - Charles Horton Cooley

A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable. - John Rawls

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself. - Bernard Beckett

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual. - Albert Einstein

An individual takes on significance only in his relationship to society as a whole. - Brian Herbert & Keven J. Anderson

Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness. - Alvin Toffler

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. - P. J. O’Rourke

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 Wad Beecher

If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end. - Bayard Rustin

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit. - John Stuart Mill

Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. - Karl Marx

How to gain the advantages of society, without at the same time losing ourselves, is a question of no slight difficulty. The wise man often follows the crowd at a little distance, in order that he may not come suddenly upon it, nor become entangled with it, and that he may with some means of amusement maintain a clear and quiet pathway. - Arthur Helps

I truly believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Since periods of change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world. - Dalai Lama

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

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. - Friedrich Nietzsche

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Stevenson

Never try to get into society, so-called. Those who try seldom get in, and if they do edge through the portals they always feel clammy and unworthy when under the scrutiny of the elect. Sit outside and appear indifferent, and after a while they may sent for you. If not, it will be money in your pocket. - George Ade

No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa. - Eugène Ionesco

No society has ever taxed or borrowed its way to prosperity. - Derek Fildebrandt

Our society is changing so rapidly that none of us can know what it is or where it is going. - Edwin H. Land

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

Societies in decline have no use for visionaries. - Anaïs Nin

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks. - Lin Yutang

Society comprises two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food. - Sébastien-Roch Nicolas

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. - Oscar Wilde

Society has gotten to the point where everybody has a right but nobody has a responsibility. - Unknown

Society is a masked ball, where everyone hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is a sphere that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands. - Charles Caleb Colton

Society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy. - John Sawhill

Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn. - Nicolas Chamfort

Society is in a process of evolution. Man is yet primitive. All that has gone before is a preparation for better things to come, but we are moving rapidly, and, I believe, securely, toward nobler things. - Elbert Hubbard

Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top. - Edward Abbey

Society is not merely a select body of spiritual or intellectual persons, but a great organism composed of all kinds of members, a net containing bad and good. - Robert Hugh Benson

Society is to the individual what the sun and showers are to the seed. It develops him, expands him, unfolds him, calls him out of himself. Other men are his opportunity. Each one is a match which ignites some new tinder in him unignitible by any previous match. Without these the sparks of individuality would sleep in him forever. - Orison Swett Marden

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death. - Andre Gide

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society takes action only when gangrene sets in. - H. D. Doan

Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another. - Chamfort

Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow. - Arthur Stringer

The happiness of society is the end of government. - John Adams

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population – the intelligent ones or the fools? - Henrik Ibsen

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. - John William Gardner

To me the progress of society consists in nothing more than in bringing out the individual, in giving him a consciousness of his own being, and in quickening him to strengthen and elevate his own mind. - William E. Channing

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. - Alan W. Watts

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan

We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society. - Hillary Clinton 

Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community. - Albert Einstein

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other. - Eric Hoffer