Society Quotes

The existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions.

Tribes like this are the truly affluent societies — not because they are so wealthy but because they do not want more than they have.

To assert, in any case, that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no one in his right mind will believe this today.

There is something suspect, especially in America, about people who don’t have ten-year plans for a career or at least a regular job.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

The poorest and most backward societies are always those that put women down.

The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. 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.

My role in society – or any artist or poet’s role – is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.