Society Quotes - Page 36

• Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

  Karl Kraus

  Marriage, Literature, Unions

  Thomas Stephen Szasz, Karl Kraus (1990). “Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry”, p.152, Syracuse University Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

  Karl Kraus

  Religion, Atheism, Culture

  25 Copy quote

• I feel sure that coups d'état would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Funny, War, Missing

  34 Copy quote

• He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Party, Men, Politics

  7 Copy quote

• The public seldom forgive twice.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Forgiving

  "Aphorisms on Man" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, (c. 1788).

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is one fact that can be established. The only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Writing, World, Facts

  14 Copy quote

• The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism.

  Alfred Kazin

  Tragedy, Development, Sensitive

  ALFRED kAZIN (1956). “ON NATIVE GROUNDS An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The worst of revolutions is a restoration.

  Charles James Fox

  Restoration, Revolution, Rebellious

  Speech to the House of Commons, December 10, 1785.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sociology and anthropology are not disciplines which take easily to situations where people are able to live out their fantasies, not just in the symbolic action of ritual, but in the concrete theater of society at large.

  Jonathan Raban

  Discipline, People, Able

  Jonathan Raban (2017). “Soft City: Picador Classic”, p.53, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• People become less inhibited from wanting to change social and economic conditions in a radical fashion according to their own interests, and from being prepared to think of state intervention in ever wider spheres as possible and useful for this purpose.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Fashion, Thinking, People

  19 Copy quote

• Society is a kind of parent to its members. If it, and they, are to thrive, its values must be clear, coherent and generally acceptable.

  Milton Sapirstein

  Parent, Kind, Members

  Milton R. Sapirstein (1955). “Paradoxes of Everyday Life: A Psychoanalyst's Interpretations”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.

  Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

  Men, Trying, Liberty

  "Du Contrat Social" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by G. D. H. Cole, 1913.

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It's just that it's incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed.

  Vaclav Havel

  Confused, Goodwill, Perplexed

  4 Copy quote

• We praise like frogs, Swear like frogs, Turn midgets into heroes, and heroes into scum: We never stop and think.

  Nizar Qabbani

  Hero, Thinking, Scum

  32 Copy quote

• Class war is not the cause of social progress; it is a disease developed in the course of social progress. The cause of the disease is the inability to subsist, and the result of the disease is war.

  Sun Yat-sen

  War, Class, Progress

  Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (1928). “San Min Chu I”

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• We will be able to achieve a just and prosperous society only when our schools ensure that everyone commands enough shared background knowledge to be able to communicate effectively with everyone else.

  Edward Hirsch

  School, Able, Enough

  5 Copy quote

• The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called ''significant literature'' will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles.

  Raymond Chandler

  Reading, Literature, Significant

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.65, Grove Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new.

  Aeschylus

  Leadership, Law, Harsh

  8 Copy quote

• Self-recognition is necessary to know one's road, but, knowing the road, the price of the mistakes and perils is worth paying. The following of that road will be all the discipline one needs. Discipline does not mean being molded by outside forces, but sticking to one's road against the forces that would deflect or bury the soul. People speak of finding one

  Randolph Bourne

  Mistake, Mean, Self

  Randolph Bourne (1992). “The Radical Will: Selected Writings, 1911-1918”, p.133, Univ of California Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Misery is evil; quarreling, a misfortune. There is only one possibility of avoiding both: a clear division of society. [Otherwise] the strong tyrannize the weak, the intelligent frighten the stupid, the inferior resist the superior, and the young mock the old.

  Xunzi

  Strong, Stupid, Intelligent

  8 Copy quote

• The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

  Daniel Dennett

  Caring, Best Effort, Meaning Of Life

  Daniel C. Dennett (2014). “Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities, in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those affected in the first instance will require further adjustments that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every change thus in a sense creates a "problemfor society, even though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually "solvedby the establishment of a new overall adjustment.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Practice, Use, Firsts

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Part I. The Value of Freedom, Chap. 2 : The Creative Power of a Free Civilization, 1960.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts.

  Ernst Mayr

  Progress, Development, Concepts

  Ernst Mayr (1982). “The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance”, p.43, Harvard University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language.

  Ernst Mayr

  Littles, Language, Mathematics

  Ernst Mayr (1982). “The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance”, p.41, Harvard University Press

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Evolution as such is no longer a theory for a modern author. It is as much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun.

  Ernst Mayr

  Atheism, Earth, Sun

  Ernst Mayr (2007). “What Makes Biology Unique?: Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline”, p.100, Cambridge University Press

  20 Copy quote

  Show source