Civil Society Quotes - Page 2

• If the Americans would only take all the money they have spent on this war (Iraq), and spend it like Soros has done on civil societies in these countries, then in 10 years they would have wonderful results.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Country, War, Iraq

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• Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

  Edmund Burke

  Lying, Justice, Abortion

  Edmund Burke (1790). “Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris”, p.230

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• Any sign that says we're going to leave Iraq before the job is done simply emboldens terrorists and creates a certain amount of doubt for people, so they won't take the risk necessary to help a civil society evolve in the country.

  George W. Bush

  Country, People, Risk

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

  Emma Lazarus

  Inspirational, Freedom, Tired

  "The New Colossus" l. 10 (1883).

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• Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep.

  Ernest Gellner

  Strong, Party, Sheep

  Ernest Gellner (1994). “Conditions of liberty: civil society and its rivals”, Hamish Hamilton Ltd

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• When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Life, Money, Men

  "Economic Sophisms". Book by Frédéric Bastiat, Second series, 1848.

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• Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Law, Cities

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• It is time for the world, the hemisphere and the region to make sure that relevant institutions of civil society and relevant laws are embedded in the mechanisms of governance.

  Baldwin Spencer

  Law, Hemisphere, World

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• [T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs, Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state - what we can call political society. And voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations - what we can call civil society. ... In a civil society, you make the decision. In a political society, someone else does. ... Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force.

  Ed Crane

  Two, Hands, Order

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• Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.

  Lord Acton

  Mean, Political, Liberty

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.45, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Civil society people - these are the people - civil society groups are the people who need to monitor the aid to ensure that the aid is directed to what it is supposed to. And in order for them to do so, they need to have the space, they need to have the freedom, and they need to have the right to demonstrate, and to petition their government. They can't do that in Ethiopia; they can't do that in Eritrea; and so this is why I was cautioning that we may be repeating some of our old mistakes.

  George W. Bush

  Mistake, People, Aids

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• So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Hands, Looks, Mouths

  "Civil engineering" by Geoff Mulgan, www.theguardian.com. October 24, 2007.

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• The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state. It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Essence, Moments, Modern

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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• Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Democracy, Church, Standards

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• Atheists in our midst are proof that all consciences can be accommodated here, even those that have no ground for holding that conscience is sacred, inalienable, and prior to civil society.

  Michael Novak

  Atheist, Atheism, Sacred

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• When men take pleasure in feeling their minds elevated with strong drink, and so indulge their appetite as to disorder their understandings, neglect their duty as members of a family or civil society, and cast off all regard to religion, their case is much to be pitied.

  John Woolman

  Strong, Men, Understanding

  John Woolman (2013). “journal”, p.49, Lulu.com

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• A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Religious, Responsibility, Building Up

  "Cardinal Ratzinger on Laicism and Sexual Ethics". zenit.org. November 19, 2004.

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• By international standards, many of the U.K.'s policies for civil society are exemplary. However, there are concerns about constraints on civil liberties - particularly restrictions on free assembly and about the rising tide of everyday regulation has seriously impeded community activity - from organising street parties to helping children.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Children, Party, Community

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• Activist government overreach and ongoing economic stagnation have shown us why Washington should not try to displace what is best left to civil society.

  Paul Ryan

  Government, Trying, Ongoing

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• If there is no willingness to use force to defend civil society, it's civil society that goes away, not force.

  Teresa Nielsen Hayden

  Use, Force, Ifs

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• Those who directed the state in the time of Solon and Cleisthenes did not establish a polity which ... trained the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and licence to do what they pleased as happiness, but rather a polity which detested and punished such men and by so doing made all the citizens better and wiser.

  Isocrates

  Freedom, Equality, Rights

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• By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Money, Power, Government

  John Maynard Keynes (2016). “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”, p.121, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• When the righteous rule, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.

  William Paterson

  Law, People, Voting

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• Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education.

  Julian Bond

  Education, Children, School

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• Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building, it is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists...it is fundamental that justice should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.

  Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

  Inspirational, Equality, Availability

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