Society Quotes

The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker -judge.
– Michel Foucault
Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.
– Felix Frankfurter
A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.
– Betty Friedan
It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.
– Betty Friedan
Like the winds that we come we know not whence and blow whither soever they list, the forces of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin. They arise before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not the speculations of men.
– Adam Ferguson
Our society's values are being corrupted by advertising's insistence on the equation: Youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness.
– John Arbuthnot Fisher
Human society is a ceaseless growth, an unfoldment in terms of spirituality.
– Mahatma Gandhi
It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e. hate, ruled us we should have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that the so-called civilized men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence.
– Mahatma Gandhi
No religion which is narrow and which cannot satisfy the test of reason, will survive the coming reconstruction of society in which the values will have changed and character, not possession of wealth, title or birth will be the test of merit.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Leaders can express the values that hold the society together. Most important, they can conceive and articulate goals that life people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in the pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.
– John W. Gardner
As you improve health in a society, population growth goes down. You know, I thought it was... before I learned about it, I thought it was paradoxical.
– Bill Gates
I look at the car park and myself and Dave Watson come in with our old cars, and these young lads come in with their new Porches I think that society has changed, there seems to be a lack of respect nowadays.
– Richard Gough
Marriage is a mutual admiration society where one person is always right, the other is the husband.
– W. Grant
I'd say that Catholicism in the United States has the distinct advantage of being in a pluralistic society, where your religion contributes something to your identity. So you tend to define yourself as a Catholic. I'm Irish, Catholic, a Democrat from the West Side of Chicago, and that's pretty much my identity.
– Andrew Greeley
All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.
– Germaine Greer
The misery of the middle-aged woman is a gray and hopeless thing, born of having nothing to live for, of disappointment and resentment at having been gypped by consumer society, and surviving merely to be the butt of its unthinking scorn.
– Germaine Greer
Libel actions, when we look at them in perspective, are an ornament of a civilized society. They have replaced, after all, at least in most cases, a resort to weapons in defense of a reputation.
– Henry Anatole Grunwald
One does, after all, take on many of the givens of a society when one takes on its language.
– Alma Guillermoprieto
I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society.
– Virginia Gildersleeve
If you have any doubts that we live in a society controlled by men, try reading down the index of contributors to a volume of quotations, looking for women's names.
– Elaine Gill
The current neglect of the problem can only irritate this deplorable state of affairs. The Black Muslims should constitute a warning to our society, a warning that must be heeded if we are to preserve the society.
– Andrew Goodman
Many people are extremely happy, but are absolutely worthless to society.
– Charles Gow
It meant that New York philanthropists, New York society, would now rediscover the library. that learning, books, education have glamour, that self-improvement has glamour, that hope has glamour.
– Vartan Gregorian
Philosophy means nothing unless it is connected to birth, death, and the continuance of life. Anytime you are going to build a society that works, you have to begin from nature and the body.
– Susan Griffin
The men who still have the largest share of the power in society don't do any domestic work. The very people who are making our most important decisions should know how to cook, know how to grow a garden, diaper a baby, and raise young people. They should not only know these things but practice them.
– Susan Griffin
Britain is not a country that is easily rocked by revolution... In Britain our institutions evolve. We are a Fabian Society writ large.
– William Hamilton
A lot of this look backwards in society and musically is to find some of the real roots, because they can't find them here. There are roots in the past, but not so much now. Maybe this explains their need to do that, and if that's the case, it's OK.
– Herbie Hancock
Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack o-n our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.
– Stephen Harper
You've got to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from eastern Canada: people who live in ghettoes and who are not integrated into western Canadian society.
– Stephen Harper
People who are much too sensitive to demand of cripples that they run races ask of the poor that they get up and act just like everyone else in the society.
– Michael Harrington
Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.
– Orrin Hatch
The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
– William Hazlitt
The idea of photographing an Arab man naked and having him simulate homosexual activity, and having an American GI woman in the photographs, is the end of society in their eyes.
– Seymour Hersh
No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
– Thomas Hobbes
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
– Eric Hoffer
A lot of artists say they'd be happy in a classless society. But artists are often the first to deceive themselves. Put them in the kind of utopia they sentimentalize, and in no time, they would be binding their feet, lengthening their necks or flattening their heads, just to be different.
– Brad Holland
Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't.
– Brad Holland
This institution of Heaven, when properly attended to, understood, and cordially embraced, turns men from darkness to marvelous light. If it finds them in a state of savage ignorance and barbarity it civilizes them, and forms them to be intelligent and good members of society.
– Samuel Hopkins
In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy.
– David Horowitz
North Korea is the biggest threat right now. Kim Jong Il is a wild card. North Korean society has collapsed on itself: There aren't many dogs or cats, there are no lights on at night. When someone like that is so isolated and has the bomb, we're in danger. We have to worry about the Russian mafia. Russia has collapsed, it's a corrupt society.
– David Hunt
Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here - not yet.
– Chet Huntley
For all of the difficulties, I am somewhat optimistic about the future. In my lifetime I have seen the resiliency of American democracy.What I've come to admire is the muscularity and flexibility of this society. What I trust is its common sense.
– David Halberstam
We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.
– Philip Gilbert Hamerton
A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds, in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends.
– Caryl P. Haskins
The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society.
– Roy Hattersley
If a man is good in his heart, then he is an ethical member of any group in society. If he is bad in his heart, he is an unethical member. To me, the ethics of medical practice is as simple as that.
– Elmer Hess
A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.
– Richard Hofstadter
I've always had the perspective that roles come into my life when I need them most and sort of teach me lessons. The same can be true of films, films are released into society to aid in a lesson, inspire people, comfort people.
– Bryce Dallas Howard
China has entered a new stage of development in which it will build a well-to-do society in an all-round manner and accelerate the socialist modernization drive.
– Jintao Hu
To overturn orthodoxy is no easier in science than in philosophy, religion, economics, or any of the other disciplines through which we try to comprehend the world and the society in which we live.
– Ruth Hubbard
The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.
– Shirley Hufstedler
Hypocrisy is the lubricant of society.
– David Hull
Mindful of his own dignity, he is mindful of others', because he wishes to safeguard what is in fact the essence of man's value, no one is replacable. It is in this way, in this solitude, that he finds friendship and a friendly society, rather than the flock or the herd.
– Eugene Ionesco
The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society.
– Roy Jenkins
Society and a court saw Jesus as an animal, monster, psychopath, and a bunch of other stuff but they spread him on a cross and torture him. He was just trying to teach people, but they labeled him and killed him. What can I say about society or any court that hasn't been said by their actions?
– Lonnie Earl Johnson
The achievements which society rewards are won at the cost of diminution of personality.
– Benjamin Jowett
Fortunes are made, and disappear, over the lifetime of a single generation. Today, a person in essence takes his wealth from society just for the duration of his or her lifetime. The next generation has to create it anew.
– Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
I wasn't particularly strong in the dramatic society, the drama group. I left Manchester Grammar School with abysmal A-level results. I then had a year's hiatus where I didn't know what to do at all.
– Ben Kingsley
I prefer what I remember to what is going on today. I don't like what I see today, the irresponsibility, the lack of moral values, permissiveness, lack of respect for the elderly, irresponsibility toward society. It depresses me.
– Ted Knight
But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at the Republican National Convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.
– Paul Krugman
The Supreme Court's only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.
– Irving R. Kaufman
A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.
– Sam Keen
I wanted to get away anyway, not against parental authority, but from being a misfit against society. I was a misfit and a maverick when it came to clothes too. When I was 16 I was wearing zoot suits. I wouldn't be seen in a T-shirt. I wanted to look sharp.
– Anton LaVey
I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.
– Bill Lee
Even in the '80s when people were gay, it was still difficult for them to come out, whereas nowadays, 20 years on, I think, um, we have a far more open-minded society that embraces the notion of homosexuality, and I think there was this doubt about my gender, you know, and at the time it possibly was controversial but... they missed my message, if you see what I mean, because for me it wasn't about a sexual issue, it was more of a feminist thing.
– Annie Lennox
This consumeristic society we all live in is very complex. We all have very high expectations - we want the big house or the car and the 2.5 kids - but we don't know whether it really brings us happiness and fulfilment because sometimes those dreams burst.
– Annie Lennox
Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one in society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe.
– Claude Levi-Strauss
Men were only made into men with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally a man any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.
– Wyndham Lewis
In this era of uncertainty and conflict, the United States - blessed with the world's strongest military, most ingenious economy, and most tolerant society - remains a model and leader to the world.
– Joseph Lieberman
In our society a man is known by the company he owns.
– Gerald F. Lieberman
We still have tremendous work ahead of us to ensure that women have equal opportunities in the workplace and in our society.
– Blanche Lincoln
I don't really judge what should be or what shouldn't be. I'm very much against that, because in China we had all the rules. As a child you have your grandparents, your parents, your teachers... I was in the army. I was in the Tibet army for three years when I was 14... Therefore, I'm very much against those rules in society... I think they limit you.
– Bai Ling
To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.
– John Locke
Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
– Vince Lombardi
People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.
– Vince Lombardi
What we have today is a different kind of enemy - it's not a country, it's not a particular society, it's not a religion. It has an unknown face.
– Ricardo Lagos
Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.
– John Lahr
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
– John Lahr
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art o social life.
– Letitia Landon
Here in this country we find in place of an aristocracy of royalty an aristocracy of wealth. Far more dangerous to the race is it than the aristocracy of royalty. It is the aristocracy of gold that disintegrates society, destroys individuals and has ruined the proudest nations.
– Mary Elizabeth Lease
I find the earth to be a place of misery in which I am surrounded by the conformity that kills society.
– Matt LeBlanc
One does not create a human society on mounds of corpses.
– Louis Lecoin
Socialism is practical, in the best sense of the term; a living, vital force of inestimable value to society.
– Daniel De Leon
I compare the current era to the industrial revolution. Over a few generations, unevenly but still irresistibly and with great pain, the technological leap from traditional agricultural society brought profound transformations in every aspect of life, not only economic and political but social, cultural and moral.
– Flora Lewis
I give society and conformity the middle finger.
– Johnny Li
The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.
– John Madden
I don't think the advertisers have any real idea of their power not only to reflect but to mold society.
– Marya Mannes
I fear being like everyone I hate, I fear failure, I fear losing control. I love balancing between chaos and control with everything I do. I always have a fear of going one way or another, getting lost in something, or losing everything to get lost in. And I fear being a completely acceptable sheep in society.
– Marilyn Manson
We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous, and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
– Judith Martin
In Canada, women's rights are a vital part of our effort to build a society of real equality - not just for some, but for all Canadians. A society in which women no longer encounter discrimination nor are shut out from opportunities open to others.
– Paul Martin
We need a new Latin American policy that is bold - different. We need to focus on building civil society, focus on the lack of infrastructure. We need look at ways to foster economic opportunity.There needs to be a more comprehensive economic vision in the region.
– Mel Martinez
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
– Karl Marx
A bore is a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. Bores are always eager to be seen talking to you.
– Elsa Maxwell
The extent to which all people in our society are made to count, and believe that they count, is not just a measure of decency; it makes sound economic sense.
– Mary McAleese
The core political values of our free society are so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness that only a few malcontents, lunatics generally, ever dare to threaten them.
– John McCain
A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.
– Mary McCarthy
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.
– John Stuart Mill
There's this idea that if you take your clothes off, somehow you must have loose morals. There's still a negative attitude in our society towards women who use a strength that's inherent - their femininity - in any way that might be considered seductive.
– Demi Moore
Pictures can and do make a difference. Strong images of historical events do have an impact on society. They can help with change.
– Charles Moore