Societies Quotes

1. "When I used to teach civil procedure as a law professor, I would begin the year by telling my students that 'civil procedure is the etiquette of ritualized battle.' The phrase, which did not originate with me, captured the point that peaceful, developed societies resolve disputes by law rather than by force."
Author: Anne Marie Slaughter

2. "East and West, most societies have come to believe that competition will produce more prosperity for more people than a planned economy. I share that belief."
Author: Anthony Lewis

3. "It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness."
Author: Arundhati Roy

4. "Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that."
Author: Brian Cox

5. "If humans were to model the lifestyle displayed by healthy community of cells , our societies and our planet would be more peaceful and vital"
Author: Bruce H. Lipton

6. "Reigns of terror are thus the bastard child of the Enlightenment. Terror in the name of utopian ideals would rise again and again in the coming centuries. The Nazi death camps and the Soviet gulags were spawned by the enlightenment. Fascists and communists were bred on visions of human perfectibility. Tens of millions of people have been murdered in the futile effort to reform human nature and build utopian societies. During these reigns of terror, science and reason served, as they continue to serve, interests purportedly devoted to the common good-- and to vast mechanisms of repression and mass killing. The belief in human perfectibility, in history as a march towards a glorious culmination, is a malformed theology."
Author: Chris Hedges

7. "If the independent, isolated nuclear family unit is, in fact, the structure into which human beings most naturally configure themselves, why do contemporary societies and religions find it necessary to prop it up with tax breaks and supportive legislation while fiercely defending it from same-sex couples and others proposing to marry in supposedly "nontraditional" ways? One wonders, in fact, why marriage is a legal issue at all—apart from its relevance to immigration and property laws. Why would something so integral to human nature require such vigilant legal protection?"
Author: Christopher Ryan

8. "I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

9. "Societies need heroes. So we travel to places where the revisionists cannot dismantle the great."
Author: David Gemmell

10. "People in free societies don't have to fear the pathology of the state. We create our own frenzy, our own mass convulsions, driven by thinking machines that we have no final authority over. The frenzy is barely noticeable most of the time. It's simply how we live."
Author: Don DeLillo

11. "People who have made comparative studies of many different societies, know that when status is ascribed, rather than achieved, individual efforts towards excellence are not directed through any form of innovation; rather, the enhancement of status occurs only through the realisation of a previously well defined role position. It is only with social change, or when some form of continual dynamic disequilibium occurs in a society, that we begin to observe the development of achievement motivation in its modern form."
Author: Dor Bahadur Bista

12. "They're such hierarchical things, film sets, they're sort of mini societies. Often they're incredibly political places."
Author: Eddie Redmayne

13. "A lifetime spent in the study of the history of societies since the dawn of mankind presumably inclined him to skepticism and misgivings in regard to any great scheme, religious or political, that set out to create universal happiness in one fell swoop; what it was more likely to create, in his opinion, was universal misery; and his faith in heaven-sent saviors was hardly greater."
Author: François Maspero

14. "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."
Author: Germaine Greer

15. "The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full, but also when people's basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies."
Author: Gro Harlem Brundtland

16. "Societies cannot move forward without law, and our constitution is the cornerstone of the law and our National Assembly is its umbrella and fortress."
Author: Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa

17. "Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136)"
Author: Howard Gardner

18. "You say that this society will come to an end, because societies always have done so. I wonder whether they have ended because they were not really societies at all."
Author: Idries Shah

19. "Democracy has always been in crisis: democracy is all about practicing the art of bearable dissatisfaction. In democratic societies, people often complain about their leaders and their institutions. The gap between the ideal democracy and the existing one cannot be bridged."
Author: Ivan Krastev

20. "Scholars and enlightened always want to define the differences between communism, socialism, fascism and other economic or political systems. It really doesn't matter to those who are subjected to those societies how someone has articulated their misery."
Author: Jake Danishevsky

21. "As for the historical inspirations I drew on in writing The Snow Queen, I suppose I would call them more cross-cultural inspirations, though they frequently involve past societies as well as present day ones."
Author: Joan D. Vinge

22. "The strong emergence of pro-feminine values in highly masculine societies signals that traditional masculine structures will continue to be challenged as the Millennial generation grows up and gains even more influence."
Author: John Gerzema

23. "Societies depend on agreed rules."
Author: John Maynard Smith

24. "Marriage is built around complementarity of the sexes, and therefore the institution of marriage is a support for stable families and societies."
Author: John Sentamu

25. "When conflicts end non-violently, it's more likely that the result will be longer-lasting, democratic societies."
Author: Julia Bacha

26. "We have to examine the extent to which we export poverty to other societies. When we decide that we will import products from China that are produced by people earning less than a dollar an hour, and grant their country most-favored-nation status (political contributions notwithstanding), we are deciding to make American workers who must earn the minimum wage compete with them. I am not suggesting that we close the doors to China or to Mexico, but I am suggesting that we look very carefully at the web of international relationships that we are creating. At the very minimum, we should understand that we have two choices in our country: we can raise world living standards by exporting those standards, or we can lower living standards- not only the world's but also our own- by deciding that it is acceptable for the products of exploited labor to enter this country."
Author: Julianne Malveaux

27. "Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities."
Author: Jurgen Habermas

28. "There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism."
Author: Maajid Nawaz

29. "The societies kids naturally form are tribal. Gangs, clubs, packs. But we're herded into schools and terrified into behaving. Taught how we're supposed to pretend to be, taught to parrot all kinds of nonsense at the flick of a switch, taught to keep our heads down and our elbows in and shut off our minds and shut off our sex. We learn we can't even piss when we have to. That's how we learn to be plastic and dumb."
Author: Marge Piercy

30. "I suppose all societies adapt their morals to their needs."
Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley

31. "Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties."
Author: Mark R. Levin

32. "We don't look at the sky anymore, instead we stare at boxes that keeps us captive; we don't walk barefoot any more, we refuse to kiss the earth with our feet, we keep busy worrying and fearing, we exist and die, like robots we work and consume. We ignore the beauty of a butterfly and the power of the eagle, we have forgotten the scent of flowers, we are too busy to enjoy nature, we are plastic most of the time; we live together but we do not connect, we are asleep. I want to cleanse myself of societies' noise, walk barefoot, and kiss the earth with my feet, I want look at the sky, and like my ancestors, I want to feel free. I want to rejoice of who I am, and what I will become."
Author: Martin Suarez

33. "Amoz Oz, who said something of the same kind, but from a different perspective: ‘People like you', he said to me, ‘are going to become very disappointed in Israel in the years ahead. You want it to behave like a European society. Instead, it is becoming a Middle Eastern society. I hope that it will not behave worse than other Middle Eastern societies. But you should not delude yourself that it is likely to behave much better."
Author: Max Hastings

34. "The cross is a crisis point for all societies which seek to produce me in and women of quiescence, men and women who are trained to give unquestioning, uncritical obedience to worldly powers and not to Christ."
Author: Megan McKenna

35. "In modern societies, some members of ethnic minority groups do not want to feel compelled to heed the voices of their communities when participating as citizens."
Author: Michael Kenny

36. "American influence in the world is certainly considerable, but the United States does not control, directly or indirectly, the politics and economics of other societies, as empires have always done, save for a few special cases that turn out to be the exceptions that prove the rule."
Author: Michael Mandelbaum

37. "In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny."
Author: Michael Novak

38. "Think how different human societies would be if they were based on love rather than justice. But no such societies have ever existed on earth."
Author: Mortimer Adler

39. "Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states -- "fear societies" and "free societies," two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external authority. It is premised on a dearth of self-respect. It is cramped.In contrast, the consciousness of freedom is one of expansiveness, trust of the self, and hope. It is a consciousness of limitless inquiry. It builds up in a citizen a wealth of self-respect."
Author: Naomi Wolf

40. "For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people."
Author: Paul Kriwaczek

41. "Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world. Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind."
Author: Paul Kriwaczek

42. "A social problem is one that concerns the way in which people live together in one society. A racial problem is a problem which confronts two different races who live in two separate societies, even if those societies are side by side."
Author: Pauline Hanson

43. "I think therapy is a rather misguided notion of capitalist societies whereby the self-indulgent examination of one's life supersedes the actual living of said life."
Author: Peter Cameron

44. "It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term."
Author: Peter L. Berger

45. "All societies are historical."
Author: Raymond Queneau

46. "Even the most primite societies have an innate resepect for the insane."
Author: S.E. Hinton

47. "In societies no less than individuals, acknowledging our limitations may ultimately be more humane than denying them."
Author: Steven Pinker

48. "Unions are susceptible to the same ills that befall all human societies."
Author: Tony Kushner

49. "It serves notice that President Bush is serious about promoting freedom, because free societies are a lot more peaceable than dictatorships and monarchies."
Author: Tony Snow

50. "Believe me, sir," he writes in the Reflections, "those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost."
Author: Yuval Levin

Societies Quotes Pictures