Society Quotes

In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.
– Don DeLillo
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
– Hunter S. Thompson
In a capitalist society, persons who create capital, like Michael Eisner, are given the staggering rewards.
– Carroll O'Connor
If you're not adapting to the very rapidly changing environment, if you can't think creatively, you lose big in this society because there are very few jobs for you left.
– Robert Sternberg
If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society.
– Lewis Thomas
If you want a free society, teach your children what oppression tastes like. Tell them how many miracles it takes to get from here to there. Above all, encourage them to ask questions. Teach them to think for themselves.
– Jonathan Sacks
If you say, I'm for equal pay, that's a reform. But if you say. I'm a feminist, that's a transformation of society.
– Gloria Steinem
If you look at the footballers, you look at our celebrity culture, we seem to be saying, 'This is the way you want to be'. We seem to be a society that celebrates all the wrong people.
– Iain Duncan Smith
If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it's a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.
– Christopher Hitchens
If you let society and your peers define who you are, you're the less for it.
– Hugh Hefner
If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society's heroes.
– Guy Kawasaki
If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.
– Jonathan Kozol
If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth, it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.
– Larry Page
If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you'll have zero capitalism, zero competition - it would just be one giant company.
– Serj Tankian
If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
– Friedrich August von Hayek
If we try to engineer outcomes, if we overturn tradition to make everyone the same, we ruin society. If we upset tradition to allow for an equal shot at the starting gate, everyone wins, except for the charlatans and would be dictators.
– Ben Stein
If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.
– Jerry Garcia
If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values.
– Ai Weiwei
If capitalism is to remain a healthy, vibrant economic system, corporations must participate in taking care of the society and the environment in which they live.
– Simon Mainwaring
If anything needs to get fixed in society, it's people's consumption of other people's problems.
– Corey Feldman
Ideology... is indispensable in any society if men are to be formed, transformed and equipped to respond to the demands of their conditions of existence.
– Louis Althusser
I, for one, would think both about how far we have come as a country and how much further we need to go to erase racism and discrimination from our society.
– Charles Rangel
I've used drugs that I do consider to be dangerous, drugs that are potentially detrimental to kids and society at large.
– Tim Robbins
I've always thought of acting as a tool to change society. I watch a lot of actors and I see panic in their eyes because they don't know why they act and I know why I act. Whether I'm a good or a bad actor, I know why I do it.
– Andy Serkis
I'm very old-fashioned in some ways because of my father, who thought that being a public servant was an honor. Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve, because we all benefit from society.
– Kathleen Turner
I'm really not interested in other people's opinions, because I think frankly most of those opinions are either misinformed and adding to this endless ball of hot air we have in our society where everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and sacred and what counts.
– H. G. Bissinger
I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society.We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?
– J. K. Rowling
I'm an underdog person, so I align myself with those who seem to be not considered valuable in polite society.
– Jessica Hagedorn
I'm 23 years old. I might just be my mother's child, but in all reality, I'm everybody's child. Nobody raised me I was raised in this society.
– Tupac Shakur
I'll never look down on and I love running into actors who say 'Oh yeah, I did a soap.' I say 'Tell me which one!' It's like being a member of a secret society.
– Nathan Fillion
I would argue that we have a generation of young people, particularly minorities, who are no longer putting up with the kinds of things their parents put up with. They're much more self-confident. It's no longer acceptable to make fun of people because of race or sex. But it has always been present in American society.
– Donna Shalala
I work with the Humane Society a lot and have three rescue cats.
– Ian Somerhalder
I work in an old tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks. You hold a mirror to crime to see what's happening in society. I could never write a crime story just for the sake of it, because I always want to talk about certain things in society.
– Henning Mankell
I will spend the next four years rebuilding the foundation of a opportunity society led by free people and free enterprises.
– Mitt Romney
I was very restless. I really wanted to be a part of a kind of a progressive society. I was fed up with these Communist doctrines and you were hassled all the time with members of the Party committee who were KGB, what you have to do, where in the West you can go or not to go.
– Mikhail Baryshnikov
I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University, and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.
– Gerard Butler
I want to initiate a change in society in the long term.
– Francois Hollande
I want to help middle-school girls stay interested in math and be good at it, and see it as friendly and accessible and not this scary thing. Everyone else in society tells them it's not for them. It's for nerdy white guys with pocket protectors.
– Danica McKellar
I want a society that provides decent jobs for those who can work and decent security for those can't.
– Frances O'Grady
I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.
– Ishmael Reed
I understand why society, especially American society, is gravitating toward fairy tales, given our economy. We've been exploring the world of witches and wizards for years. We've been exploring the world of vampires for years. Clearly the public - I mean, I feel like all of this was ushered in by 'Harry Potter' - in my own fannish beliefs.
– Ginnifer Goodwin
I think we're living in a world where society is very difficult.
– Steven Seagal
I think we need to just be very clear about what we're trying to do in Afghanistan. Frankly, we're not trying to create the perfect democracy. We're never going to create some ideal society. We are simply there for our own national security.
– David Cameron
I think we are all interested in end-times ideas and also in the current climate that we are all living in, where money is a little harder to come by, things continue to get expensive gas prices are not too far from people's heads. There are more and more people. Human society's going to have real problems.
– Dominic Monaghan
I think top scientists need to be compensated at a different scale in society. Somebody with experience will tell you that true scientists are not motivated by money - they are motivated by the quest itself. That is true. But I think an additional recognition will not hurt.
– Yuri Milner
I think the first duty of society is justice.
– Alexander Hamilton
I think the enemy is self-censorship. In a free society the biggest danger is that you're afraid to the point where you censor yourself.
– Tim Robbins
I think the debate in our society now is that people have to agree on zero-tolerance to terrorism.
– King Abdullah II
I think that when we have a better educated society, when there is less violence in our cities, when people get back into the workforce and have the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families - that for me really is the kind of success and the kind of America that I think most of us still want, we aspire to.
– Michael Nutter
I think it's great that we have organisations like Greenpeace. In a pluralistic society, we want to have people who point out all the problems that the Earth could encounter. But we need to understand that they are not presenting a full and rounded view.
– Bjorn Lomborg
I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've always turned it into a matter of honor and a way of gaining acceptance back into society if they survived.
– Sebastian Junger
I think for the most part people are proud of the bicultural foundation New Zealand is built on and the fact that we are a multicultural society.
– John Key
I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.
– Serj Tankian
I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.
– Barbara Kingsolver
I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I've done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society.
– George Saunders
I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.
– Quincy Jones
I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.
– Nelson Mandela
I respond very well to well-written material and women who have had an effect on society, something tragic or monumental has happened to them.
– Samantha Morton
I really think that elected officials should be focused on how you create sustained economic growth, how do you create jobs and all of these issues that made people - segments of our society believe are really important are diversions politically.
– Jeb Bush
I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one.
– Elizabeth Gilbert
I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.
– Ma Jian
I mean, I am fully aware of my influence and my responsibility to society in general representing the gay community. But in the same time, I don't represent the entire gay community because it's a vast, vast community, as one can imagine.
– K. D. Lang
I mean, Britain is a country of successful Muslim businesspeople, teachers and educators, journalists. So, we have to say very strongly that the two million plus Muslims in Britain, the vast bulk of them make a huge contribution to our society, and they actually make it the vibrant society it is.
– David Miliband
I love the wry motto of the Paleontological Society, meant both literally and figuratively, for hammers are the main tool of our trade: Frango ut patefaciam - I break in order to reveal.
– Stephen Jay Gould
I know what it feels like to carry a lot of weight in a society that's very image-conscious. It's a thin person's world, and we try to navigate within it without being made fun of.
– Kevin Smith
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
– Thomas Jefferson
I knew that I did not have to buy into society's notion that I had to be handsome and healthy to be happy. I was in charge of my 'spaceship' and it was my up, my down. I could choose to see this situation as a setback or as a starting point. I chose to begin life again.
– Warren Mitchell
I have, in some ways, saved characters that have been marginalized by society by playing them - and having them still have dignity and still survive, still get through it.
– Jodie Foster
I have to admit that when I watch a movie in which there is no moral context for the violence - I find that offensive. I think that's potentially damaging to society.
– Dean Koontz
I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
– Nelson Mandela
I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.
– Robert W. Service
I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.
– Charles Kuralt
I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it.
– George Soros
I feel like sometimes that I was not meant for this society.
– Mike Tyson
I feel bad about my outlook, how I feel about people and society, and that I'll never be part of society the way I should.
– Mike Tyson
I don't think we live in a particularly equal society.
– Sienna Miller
I don't think anyone in the media thinks strategically about society.
– Todd Gitlin
I don't have any well-developed philosophy about journalism. Ultimately it is important in a society like this, so people can know about everything that goes wrong.
– Charles Kuralt
I don't believe that in our society that we should have guns.
– Ed Koch
I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time.
– Eric Schmidt
I do feel like I have always, in my life, been inclined to be on the outside, walk a different path or something. Because of that, and increasingly over the years, my sense of distance from mainstream society or from the way culture works, I have a different kind of perception of it.
– Ian MacKaye
I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
I come from a line of self-motivated, determined folk - not grand, not high society, but no-nonsense, family-minded go-getters.
– Bear Grylls
I can't say that I've changed anybody's life, ever, and that's the real work of the world, if you want a better society.
– Charles Kuralt
I can't imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.
– Madeleine Albright
I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.
– Herbert Read
I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person.
– Rand Paul
I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity.
– Guillermo Cabrera Infante
I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees.
– Naguib Mahfouz
I believe if there is any place left where the humanity is still visible, it can not be anywhere else than in an Islamic society. Time would come when the world would be obliged to accept this reality.
– Jermaine Jackson
I believe discrimination still exists in society and we must fight it in every form.
– Andrew Cuomo
I applaud the American Cancer Society for all they do to eradicate smoking. Their local, state and national efforts help to discourage young people from taking up this deadly habit and the resources they provide have helped numerous smokers quit.
– Allyson Schwartz
I am willing to compete on my merits and on my character - not with the color of my skin. We talk about being a color-blind society, but I don't think the political process could actually handle that.
– J. C. Watts
I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society because they feel that there are going to be no rewards for them, if they stay.
– Mary Douglas
I am looking for suggestions on what we can do about extremists within our own society. They cannot be ignored.
– Tony Campolo
I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.
– Terry Pratchett
I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest.
– A. Whitney Brown
Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.
– Stephen Harper
How a society channels male aggression is one of the greatest questions as to whether that society will survive. That's why I am not against violence in the media, I am against the glorification of immoral violence.
– Dennis Prager