“Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.”
“There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”
“The greatest difficulty with the world is not its ability to produce, but the unwillingness to share.”
“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.”
“A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.”
“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”
“The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation.”
“Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.”
“Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly as he thinks.”
“American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.”
“The great society is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goods than with the quantity of their goods.”
“Society is like a schoolmaster who estimates boys according to their conformity to a standard that is easiest for running a school.”
“Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.”
“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.”
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
“I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”
“Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.”
“Any relations in a social order will endure, if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.”
“We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.”
“Societies need rules that make no sense for individuals. For example, it makes no difference whether a single car drives on the left or on the right. But it makes all the difference when there are many cars!”
“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”
“We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named ''fair competition'' and so forth, it is a mutual hostility.”
“Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.”
“Compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force in fighting among themselves, or in pulling in different directions.”
“We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically determined perceptions and human social needs. For historical reasons, existing societies might have such properties, leading to various forms of pathology.”
“One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.”
“To me, we must learn to spell the word RESPECT. We must respect the rights and properties of our fellowman. And then learn to play the game of life, as well as the game of athletics, according to the rules of society. If you can take that and put it into practice in the community in which you live, then, to me you have won the greatest championship.”
“Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
“If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through.”
“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.”