Society Quotes
Shakespeare, Emerson, Rousseau, Milton and John Stuart Mill lead the page. The sourced picks include Shaw’s remark in O’Flaherty V.C. (1919) that you will never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race, and a Martin Luther King sermon from 1967 on a man who talked as if he could build his barns alone.
Three entries have flags. “One man with courage makes a majority” is credited to Andrew Jackson, and the notes say it has never been found in his writings. Robert Kennedy and Ronald Reagan both repeated the attribution. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” is credited to Dostoyevsky and flagged misattributed. The “I expect to pass through this world but once” passage, credited to Stephen Grellet, is disputed. The first known print is a June 1869 magazine, writing of an unnamed Quaker.
Oh, shame to men! devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
Of creatures rational.
[T]here is a flaw in civilization from the instant it has to admit fear.
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
Why, then, the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist.
Let not the cooings of the world allure thee:
Which of her lovers ever found her true?