In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.
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.
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan.
Society must be studied in the individual and the individual in society.
We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
I dread to think of a society devoid of love, compassion and humanity.