Society Quotes

In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it.

Society, civilised 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. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life.

Disunity seems to be the basic cause of all social problems.

She believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle.

"You'll be here for the White Clown tonight, and the ladies coming over?" cried Mildred.
Montag stopped at the door, with his back turned. "Millie?"
A silence "What?"
"Millie? Does the White Clown love you?"
No answer.
"Millie, does..." He licked his lips. "Does your `family' love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?"
He felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck.
"Why'd you ask a silly question like that?"
He felt he wanted to cry, but nothing would happen to his eyes or his mouth.

Not every mind is to be estimated by the weight of a single folly; not every personality is to be judged by the drag of a single passion.
We live in an age in which the impact of materialized forces is well-nigh irresistible; the spiritual nature is overwhelmed by the shock.
The tremendous and complicated development of our material civilization, the multiplicity, and variety of our social forms, the depth, subtlety, and sophistry of our imaginative impressions, gathered, remultiplied, and disseminated by such agencies as the railroad, the express and the post-office, the telephone, the telegraph, the newspaper, and, in short, the whole machinery of social intercourse—these elements of existence combine to produce what may be termed a kaleidoscopic glitter, a dazzling and confusing phantasmagoria of life that wearies and stultifies the mental and moral nature.
It induces a sort of intellectual fatigue through which we see the ranks of the victims of insomnia, melancholia, and insanity constantly recruited.
Our modern brain-pan does not seem capable as yet of receiving, sorting, and storing the vast army of facts and impressions which present themselves daily.
The white light of publicity is too white.
We are weighed upon by too many things.
It is as if the wisdom of the infinite were struggling to beat itself into finite and cup-big minds.

For eons, humans have struggled to find less destructive ways to live together.