Social Institutions Quotes

• The less a person knows about the workings of the social institutions in his society, the more he must trust those who wield power in it; and the more he trusts those who wield such power, the more vulnerable he makes himself to becoming their victim.

  Thomas Szasz

  Becoming, Vulnerable, Victim

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• Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.

  Peter Singer

  Climate, Culture, Predator

  Peter Singer (1982). “The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology”, Plume

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• On the surface the avant garde as a whole seems united primarily in terms of what they are against: the rejection of social institutions and established artistic conventions, or antagonism towards the public (as representative of the existing order). By contrast any positive programme tends to be claimed as exclusive property by isolated and even mutually antagonistic sub-groups. So modern art appears fragmented and sectarian, defined as much by manifestos as imaginative work.

  C. D. Innes

  Art, Order, Rejection

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• Only our deep moral values and our strong social institutions can hold back that jungle and restrain the darker impulses of human nature.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strong, Moral, Human Nature

  Reagan, Ronald (1982). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981”, p.845, Best Books on

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• A sustainable human community is designed in such a manner that its ways of life, technologies, and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.

  Fritjof Capra

  Technology, Support, Community

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• It is only the belief and the confidence we have in a God why man is able to understand his own social institutions, and move and live like a rational human being.

  Marcus Garvey

  Moving, Godly, Men

  Marcus Garvey (2012). “Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey”, p.31, Courier Corporation

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• Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Wisdom, Reality, Ego

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• The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas. It is
  ideas that distinguish man from all other beings. Ideas
  engender social institutions, political changes, technologi-
  cal methods of production, and all that is called economic
  conditions.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Men, Ideas, Political

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• The beginning of civilisation is the discovery of some useful arts, by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions. The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to particular nations ... to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners;- so that in reality the origin as well as the progress and improvement of civil society is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions.

  Humphry Davy

  Art, Science, Reality

  Sir Humphry Davy (1840). “Salmonia: or, Days of fly-fishing; in a series of conversations: with some account of the habits of fishes belonging to the genus Salmo. Consolation in travel, or, The last days of a philosopher”, p.351

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• I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

  John Dewey

  Education, Children, Believe

  John Dewey, Francis William Garforth (1966). “Selected educational writings”

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• The raw material from which social institutions are fashioned is always more or less recalcitrant and any human society will tend to produce a caricature of itself.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Raw Materials, Social, Institutions

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• Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them.

  Atul Gawande

  Outsiders, Firsts, Poor

  "Medical Report" by Atul Gawande, www.newyorker.com. January 24, 2011.

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• The "family" has clearly emerged anew in the late 1970s as a central subject for discussion, debate, research and writing in bothscholarly and popular arenas. Anxiety over whether or not the family as a basic social institution is dying has diminished. In its stead has emerged a fairly broad consensus around the position that the family is "here to stay," but that it certainly is changing.

  Sheila Kamerman

  Change, Writing, Anxiety

  Sheila B. Kamerman (1980). “Parenting in an unresponsive society: managing work and family life”, Free Pr

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• We are confronted by the appearance of social institutions unintentionally created, vital for the welfare of society, which are not the result of reasoned planning

  Carl Menger

  Planning, Welfare, Appearance

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• Those social behaviors which automatically preclude the building of a democratic world must go - every social limitation of human beings in terms of heredity, whether it be of race, or sex, or class. Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face.

  Margaret Mead

  Sex, Equality, Race

  Margaret Mead (2000). “And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America”, p.161, Berghahn Books

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• As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Past, Order, May

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.90, Xist Publishing

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• The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved.

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Creating, Growth, Movement

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• No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Jobs, Our Society, Talent

  Henry Mintzberg (1989). “Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

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• Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

  Alan Watts

  Reality, Play, Ideas

  Alan Watts (1999). “Buddhism the Religion of No-Religion”, p.29, Tuttle Publishing

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• I still like being in North of England and I keep a place there. But there are a lot of things about the Continent that are to be preferred. The social institutions work better, women have a better position in society and the food is another thing.

  Andrew Eldritch

  England, Social, Institutions

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• I define "politics" as the on-going collective struggle for liberation and for the power to create - not only works of art, but also just and nonviolent social institutions.

  Adrienne Rich

  Art, Struggle, Social

  Source: criticalflame.org

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• It is intended to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.

  Raphael Lemkin

  Political, Feelings, Liberty

  Raphael Lemkin (2008). “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe”, p.79, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• We do not need to invent sustainable human communities. We can learn from societies that have lived sustainably for centuries. We can also model communities after nature's ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.

  Fritjof Capra

  Life, Nature, Learning

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• The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors.

  Franz Oppenheimer

  Men, Groups, Purpose

  Franz Oppenheimer (1923). “The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically”, p.15, Transaction Publishers

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• Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing

  Henry Mintzberg

  Business, Corporations, Management

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