We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Public school is a place of detention for children placed in the care of teachers who are afraid of the principal, principals who are afraid of the school board, school boards who are afraid of the parents, parents who are afraid of the children, and children who are afraid of nobody.
—Unknown
The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails—aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won’t last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a burden and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.
—William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) English Anglican Clergyman, Priest, Mystic
Let me put it bluntly: anyone who says that money isn’t important doesn’t have any! Rich people understand the importance of money and the place it has in our society. On the other hand, poor people validate their financial ineptitude by using irrelevant comparisons. They’ll argue, “Well, money isn’t important as love”. Now, is that comparison dumb or what? What’s more important, your arm or your leg? Maybe they’re both important.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Money will buy a bed but not sleep; books but not brains; food but not appetite; finery but not beauty; a house but not a home; medicine but not health; luxuries but not culture; amusements but not happiness; religion but not salvation; a passport to everywhere but heaven.
—Unknown
Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilisation are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur: like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The code of society is stronger with some persons than that of Sinai; and many a man who would not scruple to thrust his fingers in his neighbor’s pocket, would forego peas rather than use his knife as a shovel.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Opportunities? They are all around us… There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.
—Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American New Thought Writer, Physician, Entrepreneur
Society is no comfort to one not sociable.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
—Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German Man of Letters, Critic
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American Civil Liberties Lawyer
Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.
—Timothy Leary (1920–96) American Psychologist, Author
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.
—Henry George (1839–97) American Political Economist, Journalist
The uprooting of human beings from the land, the concentration in cities, the breakdown of the authority of the family, of tradition, and of moral conventions, the complexity and the novelty of modern life, and finally the economic insecurity of our industrial system have called into being the modern social worker. They perform a function in modern society which is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator, Writer
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
Every society honors its live conformists
and its dead troublemakers.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.
—Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist
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.
—George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish Author, Poet, Editor, Critic, Painter
Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.
—Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) Austrian Economist, Philosopher, Author
From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness—a system in which the two great commandments were to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor’s wife.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) English Historian, Essayist, Philanthropist
What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more.
—George Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick (1746–1816) British Nobleman, Politician
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright