c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Dynasties rise and fall according to what the Chinese used to call ‘the mandate of heaven’, but life for the peasant changes little.
— Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction
Magazine and television advertisements have me subconsciously believing that a sexy airbrushed image can sell a lot more canned tomatoes than without this image. Who’s to say that a dolled up vagina can’t buy me love? Yet this is what we teach our daughters through these images. It’s the makeup, manicures, pedicures, closet full of clothes, the size of our boobs, the perfection of our skin and shininess of our hair – this is what secures us love. We teach our sons to love women who look a certain way. We teach our men to support this belief system, and it’s constantly reinforced by false advertisements. It’s like that one cheesy but lovable song we can’t stop playing. We may forget about it for a while, but the minute we hear it again, it’s on repeat a few hundred times.“How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends?” you may ask. This is a question for Michael Bolton and whoever wrote the lyrics to it.
— Sadiqua Hamdan, Happy Am I. Holy Am I. Healthy Am I.
It’s not a question of what you want. No sane person ever WANTS a war. But if you see outsiders as a threat and believe that an armed defense is the only way you’re going to be safe from them, then you’re going to find yourselves in the middle of a war whether you want one or not.
— Chris Lester, Making the Cut
Right conscience and at the higher level conscientious deeds (spirituality) is the order of civilised and society-responsible men
— Priyavrat Thareja
Just like in the workplace, women who are good workers are the best workers.
— Bill Maher, When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism
We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.
— Abraham Flexner
A ‘normal person’ is what is left after society has squeezed out all unconventional opinions and aspirations out of a human being.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I have no desire to spend every night of the next few months at balls and soirees or drowning in tea with morning callers.
— Sarah M. Eden, Courting Miss Lancaster
In a materialistic society, there’s no such a thing as a ‘romantic’ broke man.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly - that business about marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
The main difference is that the enlightened believe that the poor criminal should be rehabilitated while the righteous believe that the immoral criminal should be locked up in jail. Since almost the only available system of rehabilitation in America is to be locked up in jail, the difference remains highly abstract.
— William Ryan, Blaming the Victim
In a fair and just society you can't create laws based on how you feel at the worst moment in your life.
— Norris Henderson
Those who hold to the Christian faith see law as an ultimate order of the universe. It is the invariable factor in a variable world, the unchanging order in a changing universe. Law for the Christian is thus absolute, final, and an aspect of God's creation and a manifestation of His nature. In terms of this, the Christian can hold that right is right, and wrong is wrong, that good and evil are unchanging moral categories rather than relative terms.From an evolutionary perspective, however, we have a very different concept of law. The universe is evolving, and the one constant factor is change. It is impossible therefore to speak of any absolute law. The universe has evolved by means of chance variations, and no law has any ultimacy or absolute truth. As a result when we talk about law, we are talking about social customs or mores and about statistical averages. Social customs change, and what was law to the ancient Gauls is not law to the modern Frenchmen. We can expect men's ideas of law to change as their societies change and evolve. Moreover, statistics give us an average and a mean which determine normality, and our ideas of law are governed by what is customary and socially accepted.
— Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Liberty
The state is a voluntary association of individuals designed to serve their individual interests. The state is not a faceless villain. The state is all of us. But freedom does not mean the freedom to commit violence. Violence includes direct and indirect action; i.e., it is just as violent to cause someone to starve to death by withholding aid as it is to shoot him, only sneakier.
— Robert Peate
In a materialistic society, man is likely to value the opinion of a rich man over that of a poor one; even when coming to opinions that have absolutely nothing to do with moneymaking.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
In saying no one knew about the ideas implicit in the telegraph, I am not quite accurate. Thoreau knew. Or so one may surmise. It is alleged that upon being told that through the telegraph a man in Maine could instantly send a message to a man in Texas, Thoreau asked, "But what do they have to say to each other?" In asking this question, to which no serious interest was paid, Thoreau was directing attention to the psychological and social meaning of the telegraph, and in particular to its capacity to change the character of information -- from the personal and regional to the impersonal and global.
— Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood
For our society to be better, we must revive our conscience and do Godly things.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha, Overcoming the Challenges of Life
Women, in general, are less visually aroused than men, a trait that has nearly cut the market for pornography in half.
— David Brooks, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
After all, we are all immigrants to the future; none of us is a native in that land. Margaret Mead famously wrote about the profound changes wrought by the Second World War, “All of us who grew up before the war are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before.” Today we are again in the early stages of defining a new age. The very underpinnings of our society and institutions--from how we work to how we create value, govern, trade, learn, and innovate--are being profoundly reshaped by amplified individuals. We are indeed all migrating to a new land and should be looking at the new landscape emerging before us like immigrants: ready to learn a new language, a new way of doing things, anticipating new beginnings with a sense of excitement, if also with a bit of understandable trepidation.
— Marina Gorbis, The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World
A society built upon a foundation of vengeance is a society doomed to destroy itself.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
The continued appeal of anarchism can probably be attributed to its enduring affinity with both the rational and emotional impulses lying deep within us. It is an attitude, a way of life as well as a social philosophy. It presents a telling analysis of existing institutions and practices, and at the same time offers the prospect of a radically transformed society.
— Peter   Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
You exalt me Bati,This is the message to the society,Brightest day demands struggling, suffering and sacrifice,heroic labor would suffice.
— Ankita Singhal, Aatish: Sensitizing Sentient Sentiments
You are your own cannoe and you are your own paddle, so paddle your own cannoe. Society had taught us to give away our power and abilities by making us to believe that other people are responsible for our success and failure. That is not fair!
— Israelmore Ayivor
With their concern for personal autonomy and individual freedom, anarchists more than any other socialists are aware of the inhumanity of both physical punishment and manipulative cure for anti-social members of the community. They look to reasoned argument and friendly treatment to deal with criminals and wish to respect their humanity and individuality.
— Peter   Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
Whatever its future success as a historical movement, anarchism will remain a fundamental part of human experience, for the drive for freedom is one of our deepest needs and the vision of a free society is one of our oldest dreams. Neither can ever be fully repressed; both will outlive all rulers and their States.
— Peter   Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
But here's the most incredible thing about it: the philosopher isn't proposing that as a concept; he's simply articulating what humans believe about themselves. That first they thing and therefore then they exist.What follows on from that is even worse: that since humans live that way, thinking that first they thing and then they exist, they also think that anything that doesn't think, also doesn't fully exist. Trees, the sea, the fish in the sea, the sun, the moon, a hill or a whole mountain range. None of that exists all the way; it exists on a second plane of existence, a lesser existence. Therefore, it deserves to be merchandise or food or background for humans and nothing more.
— Sabina Berman, Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World
It was because 'in 1776 our fathers retired the gods from politics.' The basic principle of the American Republic is the freedom of man in society.The Declaration of Independence was the product of Intellectual Emancipation, and that is why, from thenceforth, our date of existence should be recorded, not from the mythical birth of Jesus Christ, but from the day of our Independence! This should be the year one hundred and seventy-eight in our calendar!Despite discouraging signs here and there, the seeds of freedom planted by the American Revolution will take root, and throughout the world, if man will learn to zealously guard his freedom, Peace and Progress will come to all the world.
— Joseph Lewis, An Atheist Manifesto
In fact, the teenager's concept of "square" (f the term is still in use), when they talk about their parents, is almost identical to the concept of "cultural deprivation" as it is used by educational bureaucrats. In both cases it reflects an extremely self-centered and rigid way of looking at the world. Fortunately, with teenagers, it's a phase they grow out of.
— William Ryan, Blaming the Victim
Shoulder to shoulder, a coordinated movement of the people, their blood no longer confined in the limited circulation of the body but rolling sweetly and yet still returning through the infinite extent of China.
— Franz Kafka
Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.
— Steve Allen
The moment workers can afford too little they rebel. The last time this was a real danger was 1950. Communists took advantage of supply problems and stirred up gullible people against their very own country.
— Elfriede Jelinek, Wonderful, Wonderful Times
We all need someone who invest money or time on us.
— Pablo Lozano Brito
We are in a mutually dependent society, called civilization, and government is the oil that keeps it running and the lifeblood that carries oxygen to the various parts of the civic body.
— Jack Lessenberry
dude im starting to think that life is very unfair
— Vishal Daryanani
[A Letter to the Culture that Raised Me] I'm not here to be on display. And my body is not for public consumption. I will not be reduced to an object, or a pair of legs to sell shoes. I'm a soul, a mind, a servant of God. My worth is defined by the beauty of my soul, my heart, my moral character. So I won't worship your beauty standards, and I don't submit to your fashion sense. My submission is to something higher.
— Yasmin Mogahed, Reclaim Your Heart: Personal Insights on Breaking Free from Life's Shackles
Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exception, self-styled progressives. Radical views--even the awful ones--improve with age.
— Chuck Klosterman, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains
He who fails to achieve a dream set by himself is more honorable than he who succeeds in achieving a dream set by his society.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
As the war progresses, and as population increases to an even more intolerable level stretching resources to impossible lengths, the strong will begin fighting for their very survival. That’s what we’re seeing right now. Society will become more and more stratified into the people who aren’t buying the bullshit in society and those who blindly follow where they are led. Satanists, freethinkers, are a burgeoning minority cause. We have an illness that needs to be recognized just like alcoholism, handicaps, addictive behaviors and AIDS. We suffer from a disease called independence — a pathological aversion to regimentation and institutionalism — which prevents us from getting ‘regular’ jobs and living a ‘normal’ life.
— Anton Szandor LaVey, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey
Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do."The sign read:"Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.""It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Don’t let society’s labelshold you back. If you have atrue passion for somethingwhether its sports, art,science, etc…don’t believeanyone who says you can’t doit because you’re a girl. If youwant to play baseball, hockey,or football, don’t let anyonetell you that you can’t. If youwant to play with Hot Wheelcars and Legos, then do it.Only you are the boss of you
— Alison G. Bailey, Present Perfect
I’ve always wondered why women are expected to deny their true age. Why? To be a woman of 50 and up is a badge of triumph—a hard-earned certificate that says you survived the shallowness, the violence, the meanness, and the caprice of a male-dominated society without losing your mind!
— Psyche Roxas-Mendoza
I emphasise it now; I had little-to-nothing in common with other people. Their values I did not comprehend, their ideals were to me a living horror. Call it ostentatious but I even sought to provide tangible proof of my withdrawal from the world. I posted a sign in the entrance to the building wherein I dwelt; a sign that indicated I had no wish to be disturbed by anyone, for any purpose whatsoever.As these convictions took hold of me and, as I denied, nay even repudiated, the hold that the current society of men possesses over its ranks, as I retreated into a hermitage of the imagination, disentangling my own concerns from those paramount to the age in which I happened to be born, an age with no claim to be more enlightened, significant or progressive than any other, I tried to make a stand for the spirit. Tyranny, in this land, I was told, was dead. But I contend that the replacement of one form of tyranny with another is still tyranny. The secret police now operate not via the use of brute force in dark underground cells; they operate instead by a process of open brainwashing that is impossible to avoid altogether. The torture cells are not secret; they are everywhere, and so ubiquitous that they are no longer seen for what they are.One may abandon television; one may abandon all forms of broadcast media, even the Internet, but the advertising hoardings in every street, on vehicles, inside transport centres, are still there. And they contain the same messages.Only the very rich can avoid their clutches utterly. Those who have obtained sufficient wealth may choose their own surroundings, free from the propaganda of a decayed futurity. And yet, and yet, in order to obtain such a position of freedom it is first necessary to have served the ideals of the tyranny slavishly, thereby validating it.("The Tower")
— Mark Samuels, Best New Horror 23
In any sane society, a farmer is a billion times more important than an economist.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Even though she would dream of love, respect, and unfettered romance... it was a cyclical dilemma in her life that she seemed to be most attracted to poisonous men.
— Steve Maraboli
They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. 'Fine day,' he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly's elbow.'We were driving to-day and we thought it rather cold,' said Griselda.'Deuced cold,' said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to Mrs. Proudie.'This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,' said that lady, coming up to him and shaking his hand warmly; 'so very kind of you to come to my poor little tea-party.''Uncommonly pleasant, I call it,' said his lordship. 'I like this sort of thing--no trouble, you know.''No; that is the charm of it: isn't it? no trouble or fuss, or parade. That's what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts--what we call conversation.''Aw, yes, exactly.''Not in eating and drinking together--eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world in this has surely made a great mistake.''I like a good dinner all the same,' said Lord Dumbello.'Oh, yes, of course--of course. I am by no means one of those who would pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?''A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,' said Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation.'An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating -- can we?''No,' said Lord Dumbello, 'not always.' And he looked as though he lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.
— Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage
Law is error, you see. It's an attempt to write down a lot of things everyone ought to know anyway.
— Nick Harkaway, The Gone-Away World
The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.
— Immanuel Kant
In a society that prioritizes man’s health, a cleaner is more important than a lawyer.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Life is an ephemeral business, and we waste too much of it in judging where it would beseem us better to accept, that we ourselves may come to be accepted by such future ages as may pursue the study of us.
— Rafael Sabatini, The Life of Cesare Borgia
As we grow we seem to go further and further away from that child which rests within. But there was no choice and so we wander beyond innocence, beyond the touch of insanity and groom ourselves into the tastes of the society, fit in to their needs and instead of becoming a part of them we become like them.
— Chirag Tulsiani
As the world continually multiplies, are we in a generation where people are divided, or people are equal?
— Anthony Liccione
You are a message to the world make sure it is motivating.
— Nadair Desmar
I may be sick. I may come from a hole in the ground. My best friend may be an insect. But at least I don’t live in decent society.
— Jessica Anthony, The Convalescent
A society without humour is like a tree without roots.
— Stephan Attia, The adventures of Catrine and the Devil
When you come to a point realizing what is going on in the society, then you will also come to a point in need to fight back.
— Nadair Desmar
When a stranger on the street makes a sexual comment, he is making a private assessment of me public. And though I’ve never been seriously worried that I would be attacked, it does make me feel unguarded, unprotected. Regardless of his motive, the stranger on the street makes an assumption based on my physique: He presumes I might be receptive to his unpoetic, unsolicited comments. (Would he allow a friend to say “Nice tits” to his mother? His sister? His daughter?) And although I should know better, I, too, equate my body with my soul and the result, at least sometimes, is a deep shame of both. Rape is a thousand times worse: The ultimate theft of self-control, it often leads to a breakdown in the victim’s sense of self-worth. Girls who are molested, for instance, often go on to engage in risky behavior—having intercourse at an early age, not using contraception, smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. This behavior, it seems to me, is at least in part because their self-perception as autonomous, worthy human beings in control of their environment has been taken from them.
— Leora Tanenbaum, Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation
History tells us that six million Jews disappeared during that war. If there was no Holocaust, where did they go?' She shakes her head. 'All of that, and the world didn't learn anything. Look around. There's still ethnic cleansing. There's discrimination.
— Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller
The American Dream has become a death sentence of drudgery, consumerism, and fatalism: a garage sale where the best of the human spirit is bartered away for comfort, obedience and trinkets. It's unequivocally absurd.
— Zoltan Istvan, The Transhumanist Wager
A civilization can easily drown in what it knows as in what doesn't know. Consider,' he continued, Gotho's Folly. Gotho's curse was in being too aware - of everything. Every permutation, every potential. Enough to poison every scan he cast on the world. It availed him naught, and worse, he was aware of even that.
— Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates
Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of "inspiration." It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
The question of good and the nature of evil will always be one of philosophy’s most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth clichés lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind’s destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race.
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols!
— Ludwig von Mises
Without morality and virtue most things in a free society fall apart. But with them, anything is possible.
— Glenn Beck, Control: Exposing the Truth About Guns
It is perhaps because of the Iranian concept of the home and garden (and not the city or town it is in) as the defining center of life that Iranians find living in a society with such stringent rules of public behavior somewhat tolerable. Iranian society by and large cares very little about what goes on in the homes and gardens of private citizens, but the Islamic government cares very much how its citizens behave once they venture outside their walls.
— Hooman Majd, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
In a world where PG 13 means kinda-sorta-depends on your level of morals, I don’t wish to loosen our kids’ morals just because some adults choose to say, “They are going to see it anyway.” If we don’t show them that integrity is something you should always have in the back of your mind, then we’ve given up on them.
— Cyndi Goodgame
You change society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political discussions are being made, and you will change the outcomes... You will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.
— Jim Wallis
Sadly but, perhaps, not altogether unexpectedly this society has had very limited success in achieving what is supposed to be the justification for its existence-- the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest possible number of people. In so far as its citizens are saved from the major anxieties and responsibilities which normally surround the business of being a man, they transfer what appears to be an unvarying human capacity for worry to the most trivial things, making mountains out of molehills on a vast scale; and they have 'nervous breakdowns' over problems which men and women living under sterner conditions would hardly find time to notice.
— Charles Le Gai Eaton, King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World
You’re one of those kinds of women—those kinds of people I should say—as am I.”“And what kind of woman is that?” Mary was very curious and excited now.“A woman who is not satisfied doing only what society says should satisfy her.
— Olivia Fuller, Something Wicked
So many ruins bear witness to good intentions which went astray, good intentions unenlightened by any glimmer of wisdom. To bring religion to the people is a fine and necessary undertaking, but this is not a situation in which the proposed end can be said to justify the means. The further people have drifted from the truth, the greater is the temptation to water down the truth, glossing over its less palatable aspects and, in short, allowing a policy of compromise to become one of adulteration. In this way it is hoped that the common man – if he can be found – will be encouraged to find a small corner in his busy life for religion without having to change his ways or to grapple with disturbing thoughts. It is a forlorn hope. Standing, as it were, at the pavement’s edge with his tray of goods, the priest reduces the price until he is offering his wares for nothing: divine judgement is a myth, hell a wicked superstition, prayer less important than decent behaviour, and God himself dispensable in the last resort; and still the passers-by go their way, sorry over having to ignore such a nice man but with more important matters demanding their attention. And yet these matters with which they are most urgently concerned are, for so many of them, quicksands in which they feel themselves trapped. Had they been offered a real alternative, a rock firm-planted from the beginning of time, they might have been prepared to pay a high price.
— Charles Le Gai Eaton, King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World
Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I would expand on his thought by suggesting, "The unexamined society is not worth living in.
— Eileen Workman, Sacred Economics: The Currency of Life
To find stability within the world, one must first find stability within.
— Tyler J. Hebert
What now strikes as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility;they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists.
— George Orwell
Society can serve its citizens only to the extent that it knows them.
— David Marusek, Mind Over Ship
I think it's important that we give back to society and our fellow man regardless of our professions. We all need help at times. And when we support each other, we're all a little stronger.
— Rhonda Hopkins
Osman and Prideep had been in my employment for some weeks. Every Friday I would take the to lunch. It was the high point of their calender. During the meal I would harangue them as a reminder of what they had been hired for: but my orations never seemed to increase their output. I realised later that, in the East, a commitment to produce does not automatically accompany employment.
— Tahir Shah, Beyond The Devil's Teeth
Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef ... Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees...
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Their management and regulation of our lives spans the total spectrum of American experience, from their obtuse Imperial Measurement System, to their irregularity-strangled English language. From their lobbyist-ruled government bureaucracy, to their consumer-oriented religious holidays like Christmas. From their brainless professional sports jocks cast as heroes, to their anorexic supermodels warping the concept of beauty. These are the people who made sugary colas more important that water; fast food more important than health; television sitcoms more important than reading literature. They made smoking a joint in your home a crime; going out in public without your hair tinted an embarrassment; and accidentally carrying a half-filled bottle of baby formula on an airplane a terrorist act. Do you realize 85 percent of Americans still say 'God bless you' after someone sneezes? And that 'In God We Trust' is on every single dollar in circulation? Or that 'One nation under God' is recited everyday in the Pledge of Allegiance by millions of impressionable kids?
— Zoltan Istvan, The Transhumanist Wager
The biggest mystery of the people is "The People".
— Himmilicious
What does it mean to be an 'open source' society? What does one mean when one says one has an 'open mind'? Open source means that its a society everybody can work on improving. It has a synergy that allows the best minds to float on top, since there is no entropical hierarchy of mediocrity - once everything stays fluid there is the odd chance for genius elements to actually lead. Such is the case now in Turkey. The protesters are a fluid synergy that have no entropical leadership, and thus the most brilliant PR moves are made by the resistance, who are opposed by the worst sort of mediocrity that is totally at odds with reality. An 'open mind' follows a similar process, but in this case the entropy hides in the hierarchy of ideas that is implanted in the brain: once a person follows mediocre ideas - such as the 'idea' that 'marriage is the meaning of life' or 'having a job is the purpose of existence' etc - then the phenomenon of the 'open mind' becomes already impossible, for there is an internal hierarchy of entropy present that will prevent any sort of original impulse to have the meaning it truly has. Hence, the only way to escape the mediocrity of ones own mind is to allow anything to build and revise it.
— Martijn Benders
Let's stop judging others, and relieve them of the heavy burden they are carrying on their shoulders because of us.
— Saurabh Sharma
Hip Hop Generation “captures the collective hopes and nightmares, ambitions and failures of those who would otherwise be described as “post-this” or “post-that.” 
— Jeff Chain in "Can't Stop Won't Stop A History of the Hip-Hop Generation "
You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
People who worry that nuclear weaponry will one day fall in the hands of the Arabs, fail to realize that the Islamic bomb has been dropped already, it fell the day MUHAMMED (pbuh) was born.
— Joseph Adam Pearson.
She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.
— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? The reason is clearly that the human heart as modern civilisation has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied, because it feels deply, perhaps even unconsciously, that it has somehow missed the meaning of life, that perhaps others, but not we ourselves, have secured the good things which nature offers man's enjoyment.
— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
I don't think I can give you an answer. Oh, I could give you Freudian reasons with fancy talk, and that would be right as far as it went. But what you want are the reasons for the reasons, and I'm not able to give you those. Not for the others, anyway. For myself? Guilt. Shame. Fear. Self-belittlement. I discovered at an early age that I was-- shall we be kind and say different? It's a better, more general world than the other one. I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me--and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The family is the basis of society. As the family is, so is the society, and it is human beings who make a family-not the quantity of them, but the quality of them.
— Ashley Montagu
The Book revealed to Muhammad is one and unique of its kind. It has left indelible impression on the hearts of humanity. Nothing can overcome its majesty. The Quran has given new dimensions to human thinking - Surprising reforms, stunning success! The power that created in Muslims a ravenous appetite for knowledge sprung from the Quran.
— B. Margoliouth
Males have been groomed since birth, according to the specifications of a sick and perverse society, to become instruments of war.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
A society needs famous people
—  the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society.
I found it hateful, yet I wanted to be part of it.
— Storm Constantine, The Bewitchments of Love and Hate
Who is the most worthy of admiration, musician or audience?Probably the musician will tell that his audience and the musician that his audience
— Válgame, Zori 2ª Parte
No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.
— James Branch Cabell, Beyond Life
Customs, morals--is there a difference?
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.
— Huston Smith
Build your cities proud and high. Lay your sewers. Span your rivers. Work feverishly. Sleep dreamlessly. Sing madly, like the bulbul. Underneath, below the deepest foundations, there lives another race of men. They are dark, sombre, passionate. They muscle into the bowels of the earth. They wait with a patience which is terrifying. They are the scavengers. They emerge when everything topples into dust.
— Henry Miller
Modern society, the political body, the legal and judiciary system, the state of governance, capitalism and the very fabric of the society itself, including our religions and so-called morals and values, are institutions steeped in traditions of absolute and total violence.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The height of human achievement and glory, Muhammad.
— Pringle Kennedy
Love is the light by which all are brought forward out of darkness.
— LeeAnn Taylor
Unfortunately, we-especially in the United States-have become increasingly mechanized, so that today we feel very strongly that if we can take anything out of human hands and especially out of the human heart and put it through a machine, we have made progress. Indeed, we flatter ourselves that we can make machines that think like human beings, while not always pausing to reflect that in the process we have also succeeded in making millions of human beings who can feel and think like machines. It is a sorry reflection.
— Ashley Montagu
Artists are often the barometers of society.
— Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity
In my society, even the right things are wrong.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Why, play we, these games of mere men?
— Daniel A. Craig
If you don't have a whole lot of unsatisfied people, the economy stops dead, doesn't it?
— Andy Couturier, A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance
On my way out I didn't look at the dark guy, the suicide bomber, again. I think I didn't look at him because I didn't believe he was a terrorist, but maybe I didn't look at him because I didn't want to embarrass him.
— Assaf Gavron, Almost Dead
It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.
— Noam Chomsky
We believe we are the consumers, but we are the consumed.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
If you think people in your life are normal, then you undoubtedly have not spent any time getting to know the abnormal side of them.
— Shannon L. Alder
It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
— Isaac Asimov, Foundation's Edge
Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.
— François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims
Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dignified’ ; ‘if your face betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse’; ‘if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you’re repulsive’ ; ‘if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you’re a whore’; if you enjoy eating, you’re a pig’; ‘if you take pleasure in sleeping, you’re no better than a cow’; and so on.These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren’t taken so much to heart.
— Amélie Nothomb, Stupeur et tremblements
One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.
— Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals
If you tell me bad things about someone, you're telling bad things about me behind me
— Válgame, Poemas y canciones para el mal de amores Volumen1
What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself of all those lives which had woven themselves into the pattern of my own life and were making my destiny a part of theirs. To shake myself free of these accumulating experiences which were mine only by force of inertia required a violent effort. Now and then I lunged and tore at the net, but only to become more enmeshed. My liberation seemed to involve pain and suffering to those near and dear to me. Every move I made for my own private good brought about reproach and condemnation. I was a traitor a thousand times over.
— Henry Miller
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
— Thomas Jefferson
Hunger and necessity are poor teachers of morality. A society that cannot provide the basics of life does not get its laws obeyed.
— A.J. Quinnell, Man On Fire
humanity suffers terribly from the demons it has created over lengths of time. we learn from nothing that we do. we create religions, heritage, race, traditions, then they all in turn become our stumbling blocks from becoming one. we suffer from the creations of our own inability to interpret history. the only thing we have succeded on is seperation.we are not that different from one another as we think we are. but we are too corrupted to break our deconstruction.
— Jeffrey Fischer
Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego's regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society's longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas.
— Dan  Harmon
Some people can be so generous when they give nothing away!
— Rossana Condoleo
Have you ever been to the beach and wanted to feed the seagulls? The problem is you tear off a little crust from your sandwich and toss it to one, and ten more show up. Toss a little more and a flock descends. You start to wonder: if I run out of bread, will I become the meal?Turkeys are different. They startle easily and run for the barn. In the wild, they run for the hills. Of course, they’re very tasty. Benjamin Franklin thought them majestic enough to be an emblem for our country. I’m sorry, but Thanksgiving would be downright depressing. There’s our national symbol lying stuffed and roasted and ready to carve up for hungry guests. And then we have the eagles. Our forefathers were trained in the Bible. […]They would have known Isaiah 40:31. “Those who wait upon the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” They were making war on the greatest power in the world of the time; the world was watching them. What could this band of commoners do? What troubles me about our country today is how many seagulls there are, scrambling for more. Remember the movie “Finding Nemo”? “Mine, mine, mine!” And we sure have a lot of gutless turkeys running for the barn whenever hard decisions have to be made; like how to keep our country solvent so our children won’t be in soup lines… Where are the eagles? That’s what I want to know. Please, God, we need us some eagles!
— Francine Rivers
Whom boasts about his happiness, cause doesn't got it!
— Válgame, Poemas y canciones para el mal de amores Volumen1
The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide‟s reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by thePage | 49 .state which paid the coroner? And then, since you had been declared temporarily mad, your reasons for killing yourself were also assumed to be mad. So I doubt anyone paid much attention to Adrian‟s argument, with its references to philosophers ancient and modern, about the superiority of the intervening act over the unworthy passivity of merely letting life happen to you.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.
— Aristotle
Turn to your community and the great earth for sustenance and knowledge.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Perhaps our judgement of the purple woman was unfair. No doubt her theories concerning the "approach of the Teatro" made us all uneasy. But was this reason enough to cast her out from that artistic underworld which was the only society available to her? Like many societies, of course, ours was founded on fearful superstition, and this is always reason enough for any kind of behavior. She had been permanently stigmatized by too closely associating herself with something unclean in its essence.
— Thomas Ligotti, Teatro Grottesco
All decisions we’ve come to accept as right or wrong are ingrained in us from the society in which we abide. Rights and wrongs are not universally known or transferable.
— John-Talmage Mathis, For the (Soon) Unemployed: You Against Them
We are sitting on top of a vast cultural and historical pyramid of accumulated misconceptions, lies and myths, built one on top of the other.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Nations and governments come and go, but people remain, and therefore people are the ultimate foundation of what is real and worthy.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
A disposable society is only fit for disposable people.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
To Jurgis the packers had been the equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people. Chapter 29, pg. 376
— Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
The truth is, living in any society is difficult. Those who become desperate with a fractured sense of security are much more prone to being taken advantaged of.
— John-Talmage Mathis, For the (Soon) Unemployed: You Against Them
The two-way street of Total Information Awareness is the road that leads to a more transparent and complete picture of ourselves, our governments, and our world.
— Newton Lee, Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness
Depression: the healthy suspicion that modern life has no meaning and that modern society is absurd and alienating.
— Neel Burton, The Meaning of Madness