Society Quotes

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A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
Robert Heinlein /Beyond This Horizon/

All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!
Rudyard Kipling /Debits And Credits/

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
Robert Heinlein /Beyond This Horizon/

Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Robert Heinlein

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
Bertrand Russell

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.
William Makepeace Thackeray

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F. Kennedy

It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.
Robert Heinlein /Friday/

It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal.
Thomas Szasz /The Myth of Mental Illness/

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
Bertrand Russell

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it.
Virginia Woolf

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

No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Bertrand Russell

Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.
Herbert Hoover

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. Skinner

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.
Simone de Beauvoir

The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can't so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care?
Terry Pratchett

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.
Virginia Woolf

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
George Washington

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
Plato

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.”
Robert Heinlein

Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.
George Burns

We are all of us, to some degree or another, brainwashed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with foreign eyes..
Doris Lessing

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
John Stuart Mill