Society Quotes

I would as soon put a girl alone into a closet to meditate as give her only the society of her needle.
– Maria Mitchell
I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context.
– Joseph Beuys
I wish we lived in a society that made it safe and provided the courage for everyone to come out.
– Judith Light
I wish the Peace Corps and its volunteers continued success and perseverance. We are grateful for their contributions to society and dedication to providing assistance where it is needed. May the Peace Corps continue its legacy of service, both at home and abroad.
– Kenny Marchant
I wish the government and the Minister of Justice would address these legal and constitutional arguments, but they refuse to. They want Canadians to go blindly into their brave new world, but it is not wise for a society to move blindly in any direction.
– Stockwell Day
I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.
– Damien Hirst
I was really bright as a kid and tested well, and it was clear that I was going to get scholarships to any schools I wanted. My dad always said I could be an engineer at that time it was the elite of society: steady job, working in science, which was then the answer to every problem we had. It was kind of a mandate. Kind of a dream he had for me.
– James Wood
I was in civil society long before I was ever in politics or my husband was ever even elected president.
– Hillary Clinton
I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.
– Ruben Blades
I think we have to face the reality that in a society where there is a legitimate threat of terrorism, not being able to see one's face, not being able to have some sense of communication in that way, is for many societies a challenge.
– Hillary Clinton
I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems.
– Harri Holkeri
I think this society suffers so much from too much freedom, too many rights that allow people to be irresponsible.
– Boyd Rice
I think there's a time in your life where you don't feel like you fit in. I think everyone has that when you're a teenager, especially, and especially in the society we live in.
– Matthew Vaughn
I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.
– John Wooden
I think that every child grows up with the ideas that what we are given, is our society. Your education, and your mother and father, they tell you this is how it is, but then you hit adolescence and you think, 'Is it? Why? Why is it like that?' Sometimes that questioning leads to something more.
– Alice Englert
I think sometimes in life we want to ignore the problems of society and just think about the good. I believe in positive thinking and affirmative living, I also think it's really important to remember all of our disenfranchised members of society.
– Kerry Washington
I think politics is important. It's how we run our society. I think it should be natural to have an interest in the subject, and I almost don't understand why some people don't.
– Chester Brown
I think people are born bisexual and the make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who is bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never sleep with a girl who had slept with a man.
– Megan Fox
I think it's child abuse to have someone in the public eye too young. Society basically values wealth and fame and power at the cost of well-being. In the case of a child, it's at the cost of someone's natural development. It's already hard enough to develop.
– Alanis Morissette
I think beauty comes from within, and society paints a ridiculous picture.
– Rachel Bilson
I think basically becoming famous has taken the place of going to Heaven in modern society, hasn't it? That's the place where your dreams will come true. It's an act of faith now they think that's going to sort things out.
– Jarvis Cocker
I think as an American society, when we're paying too many taxes or dealing with war, we don't want to see sad things at the movies.
– Zoe Saldana
I suppose I'm intrigued with the bad traits of society, because I'm a part of society, and the bad traits pose the dangerous questions for our future.
– Jude Law
I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let's bring joy back to the experience.
– Sara Blakely
I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society's care.
– Camille Paglia
I hope one day I will host my own charity event to give back to society.
– Yani Tseng
I honestly don't know, but if America continues to refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, I see a bleak future not only for American society, but for the world as a whole. This is a global problem that is not going away, and the United States is an obstacle to solving it.
– Peter Singer
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I have no doubt that given a real choice, the vast majority of Muslims and Arabs, like everyone else will choose a free society over a fear society.
– Natan Sharansky
I have long said there are three distinct groups under the GOP's tent: theological warriors, who want to impose their social views on the rest of society Tea Party zealots, who say with a straight face that they want the government to get out of their Medicare and remnants of the pro-business moderates.
– Eliot Spitzer
I have for some time urged that a nuclear abolition summit to mark the effective end of the nuclear era be convened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 70th anniversary of the bombings of those cities, with the participation of national leaders and representatives of global civil society.
– Daisaku Ikeda
I had three chairs in my house one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
– Henry David Thoreau
I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.
– Alexis Korner
I got married at 22 and remained in an abusive marriage for 10 years. I made up my mind that that was never going to happen to me again. I made a brave step to walk out in a society when you didn't walk out of an abusive marriage. It was mental and physical abuse.
– Joyce Banda
I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled - all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you - stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame.
– Anne Lamott
I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'
– Pete Townshend
I feel that the Christian experience and the Jewish one have much to give each other. If this open society continues and there is no return to political anti-Semitism, then this encounter, deeper than any theology, may happen.
– Lionel Blue
I don't think people should have boundaries put on them, by themselves or society or another gender, because it's our birthright to experience life in whatever way we feel best suits us.
– Hilary Swank
I don't think my principles change. I think the way in which you apply those principles to modern society changes.
– William Hague
I don't know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood, important people can't stand to be invited someplace that isn't full of other important people. They don't mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners.
– Marilyn Monroe
I didn't become leader to transform the Liberal Democrats into an enlarged form of the Electoral Reform Society. It's not the be all and end all for us. There are other very, very key ambitions in politics, not least social mobility and life chances, that I care about as passionately if not more.
– Nick Clegg
I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.
– Naguib Mahfouz
I could pose in fashion commercials as a high society star but politics is a new way of life.
– Marat Safin
I come from that society and there is a common thread, specifically family values - the idea that you do anything for your family, and the unconditional love for one's children.
– Ednita Nazario
I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.
– George Soros
I belong to the generation of workers who, born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland, had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry, becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society.
– Lech Walesa
I believe there is a relationship between having an interest in the arts and the behaviour of society as a whole. Some politicians find it difficult that the arts is a weapon of happiness... Politics is often about deprivation rather than the opening up of ideas and nourishing creative endeavour.
– Richard Eyre
I believe the home and marriage is the foundation of our society and must be protected.
– Billy Graham
I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic society, events depend on a strong leadership with a strong power of persuasion, and not on the opinion of the masses.
– Yitzhak Shamir
I am sure that I have been much more useful to society as a medical physicist.
– John Cameron
I am privileged to be a citizen of the single greatest society in all of human history.
– Marco Rubio
I am persuaded, that if any attempt is made to improve the education of the poor, and such an unmanly spirit should guide the resolution of a society or committee for that purpose, it would render the design abortive.
– Joseph Lancaster
I am optimistic that peace can be achieved in the region because I believe that every society on earth can be free and that if freedom comes to the Middle East, there can be peace.
– Natan Sharansky
I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
I am against marriage, and I don't give a fig for society.
– Brigitte Bardot
I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card.
– Ron Paul
Humor helps ease the tension of race and the differences in society. If there wasn't comedy I don't know if Obama could have ever become president.
– Marlon Wayans
Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.
– John Ralston Saul
Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.
– Mason Cooley
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.
– Edward Sapir
How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?
– Paul Sweeney
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
– Naguib Mahfouz
Hatred is corrosive of a person's wisdom and conscience the mentality of enmity can poison a nation's spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and block a nation's progress to freedom and democracy.
– Liu Xiaobo
Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature.
– Dennis Prager
Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.
– Paul Farmer
Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.
– Harry Browne
Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.
– William Makepeace Thackeray
Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country.
– Isabel Allende
Girls are the future mothers of our society, and it is important that we focus on their well-being.
– Miriam Makeba
Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
– Mao Zedong
Friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view.
– August Strindberg
Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.
– Victor Hugo
Financial institutions, the corporate world and civil society - all must uphold high standards of probity in their working. Only a genuine partnership between the Government and its people can bring about positive change to create a just society.
– Pratibha Patil
Film-makers are always going to be interested in making movies that plug into society around them. That's what a vibrant, artistically alert community should be doing. After all, it would be sad if we only made films about alien robots.
– Mark Boal
Everyone in society should be a role model, not only for their own self-respect, but for respect from others.
– Barry Bonds
Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships.
– Rick Santorum
Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.
– Huston Smith
Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.
– Karen Armstrong
Even if society dictates that men and women should behave in certain ways, it is fathers and mothers who teach those ways to children not just in the words they say, but in the lives they lead.
– Augustus Y. Napier
Europe, which gave us the idea of same-sex marriage, is a dying society, with birthrates 50 percent below replacement.
– Maggie Gallagher
Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society.
– Rowan D. Williams
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
– Charles De Secondat
Dreams can become a reality when we possess a vision that is characterized by the willingness to work hard, a desire for excellence, and a belief in our right and our responsiblity to be equal members of society.
– Janet Jackson
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
– Denis Diderot
Death is always around the corner, but often our society gives it inordinate help.
– Carter Burwell
Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, then Oxford College in Minnesota, and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee, where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling, who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.
– Peter Agre
Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society and we can't get out of it if we would.
– Thomas Hardy
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
– J. B. Priestley
Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute 'Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.'
– Ernestine Rose
Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.
– Karl Marx
By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.
– Lascelles Abercrombie
By focusing once and for all on helping the Palestinians build a free society, I have no doubt that an historic compromise between Israelis and Palestinians can be reached and that peace can prevail.
– Natan Sharansky
But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.
– Henry Louis Gates
But with the steady disintegration of the family in modern society over the last century, the role of the school in bridging the gap has become vital!
– Stephen Covey
But our society does not grant nontraditional forms of intelligence equal recognition, no matter how much it would help us get along or truly enrich our lives.
– Joan D. Vinge
But now, more and more, its society is concerned with economy and finance.
– Tadao Ando
But look, I was born in 1956, the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and, by and large, people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.
– Tom Hanks
But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.
– Harold Bloom
But in terms of how people live together, how we minimize the prospects of conflict and maximize the prospects of peace, the place of religion in our society today is essential.
– Tony Blair
Bulls can do nothing to demand justice. They can only defend themselves as best they can in a fight with a pre-determined ending and die never knowing why they were forced to endure such a painful and prolonged death. It's up to us, as a civilized society, to call for an end to the Running of the Bulls and bullfighting.
– Ingrid Newkirk