Society Quotes

Comedy is subjective, Murray, isn't that what they say? All of you, the system that knows so much: you decide what's right or wrong the same way you decide what's funny or not.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

George Bernard Shaw

Life Quotes

Optimism

Pessimism

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Albert Einstein

Science

Nature

The further a society drifts from Truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King Jr.

All my life I've kept trying to go up in society. To where everything higher up was legal, straight... But the higher I go, the more crooked it becomes. Where the hell does it end?

The Godfather: Part III

In our society we feel we must be happy. If we're not happy we feel hopeless. We feel like failures.

Veronika decides to die

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever. And remember that it is for ever.
The face will always be there to be stamped upon.
The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again.

Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.

Jane Ostin

Persuasion

on behalf of the author

If you run with the pack, bark or no, but wag your tail.

Explanation:

Translated from the Russian by Kathleen Cook

You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

George Orwell

1984

Surveillance

— But you're against the death penalty?
— Mmhmm. Because of what it says about us as a society.
— Suppose, governor, it was your wife.
— And she was murdered, what would I do?
— It gets more complicated when it's personal.
— Sure. Well, if I could get to him, Uh, I would find a way to kill him.
— So you, you, governor, would impose a death penalty.
— No, I would commit a crime for which I would happily go to jail.
— Then why not let society do that?
— Because society has to be better than the individual.