156 Individuals And Society Quotes

Following is our list of individuals and society quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about society today.

Famous Individuals And Society Quotes

Each of us is a being in himself and a being in society, each of us needs to understand himself and understand others, take care of others and be taken care of himself. — Haniel Long

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it. — Simone de Beauvoir

In other words, are humans fundamentally social animals who strive hard to carve out room for their individuality, or are they individuals who form social contracts? — John Mearsheimer

Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. — Mahatma Gandhi

Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community. — Sherman Alexie

The human society is the extension of the individual. Therefore, if we really want a radical change, if we want a better world, we need to change individually. — Samael Aun Weor

The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to support society. — Joseph Campbell

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual. — Albert Einstein

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. — Karl Marx

Human society is made up of partialities. Each citizen has an interest and a view of his own, which, if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room for any other citizen. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families. — Margaret Thatcher

Society lives by faith, and develops by science. — Henri Frederic Amiel

You can never really understand an individual unless you also understand the society,historical time period in which they live,personal troubles, and social issues — C. Wright Mills

So in every individual the two trends, one towards personal happiness and the other unity with the rest of humanity, must contend with each other. — Sigmund Freud

Short Individuals And Society Quotes

• Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. — B. F. Skinner
• Man, the molecule of society, is the subject of social science. — Henry Charles Carey
• In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized. — Alex Grey
• Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his. — Mario Vargas Llosa
• At crucial junctures, every individual makes decisions and ... every decision is individual. — Raul Hilberg
• Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness. — Thomas Paine

Top 10 Individuals And Society Quotes

The State is a gang of thieves writ large - the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society. — Murray Rothbard

In a society in which individualism is becoming rampant, people more and more believe that they are the center of the world. Such a belief system makes individual failure almost inconsolable. — Martin Seligman

If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well. — Helen Prejean

There is no free society without silence, without the internal and external spaces of solitude in which the individual freedom can develop. — Herbert Marcuse

If we confront anti-Semitism ... if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness. — Michael Douglas

We who live in free market societies believe that growth and prosperity, and ultimately human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down. — Ronald Reagan

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. — Karl Marx

Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society. — Lawrence Kohlberg

What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments. It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them. — John Dickinson

If we are to make poverty history, we must have the active participation of States, civil society and the private sector, as well as individual volunteers. — Kofi Annan

Society And Individuals Quotes

I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. — Karl Popper

Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself. — Erich Fromm

The clown has great importance as part of the search for what is laughable and ridiculous in man. We should put the emphasis on the rediscovery of our own individual clown, the one that has grown-up within us and which society does not allow us to express. — Jacques Lecoq

Approaches to death and dying reveal much of the attitude of society as a whole to the individuals who compose it. The development of ideas of what constitutes a good death can even be traced to prehistory. — Cicely Saunders

If you trace up Masonry, through all its Orders, till you come to the grand tip-top head Mason of the World, you will discover that the dread individual and the Chief of the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Superior General of the Jesuit Order] are one and the same person. — James Parton

No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society. — Naomi Wolf

I used to comfort myself with the belief that it was only certain individuals and their peculiar notions that spoilt things for the rest of us. But how many individuals does it take before it's not the individuals who are prejudiced but society itself? — Malorie Blackman

Food that is necessary for man’s existence is as sacred as life itself. Everything that is indispensable for its preservation is the common property of society as a whole. It is only the surplus that is private property and can be safely left to individual commercial enterprise. — Maximilien Robespierre

To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies. — Cornel West

In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who’s comfortable "putting himself out there." — Susan Cain

Society Today Quotes

If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority. — Barbara Jordan

In today's society, looking good and feeling good often trumps doing good and being good. And some people don't know the difference anymore. — Ravi Zacharias

If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today. — Francis Schaeffer

A women's place in history has never been given the attention that it needs to be given, and that's why we have a lot of the misogyny in our society today. — Dolores Huerta

Today we know that centralization and big bureaucracies have not, as promised, been the answer for promoting better opportunities for society. — Carlos Salinas de Gortari

In the old days people never bothered about what others did, so long as they were free to do what they liked themselves. Today, one cannot sneeze without being corrected, let alone enjoy oneself. That's what politics have done to our society — Tunku Abdul Rahman

To live in society today is like living in one enormous comic-strip. — Jean-Luc Godard

Any kind of consciousness that is not related to the production or consumption of material goods is stigmatized in our society today. — Graham Hancock

I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help. — Hannah Arendt

Today we have a temporary aberration called "industrial capitalism" which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital, the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible capitalist would do that. — Amory Lovins

Society And Culture Quotes

Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society. — Antonio Gramsci

All of us in the academy and in the culture as a whole are called to renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions-and society-so that the way we live, teach, and work can reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our passion for justice, and our love of freedom. — Bell Hooks

I'm totally against women in combat, because we live in a culture and a society that imposes on every man the concept of women and children first...If you had a man and a woman trying to go through some dangerous woods, the man's instinct would be to protect the woman. Therefore you weaken the man. — Grace Hopper

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class. — John Rawls

It's not easy, especially in our politically polarized world, to recognize both the structural and the cultural barriers that so many poor kids face. — James David Vance

Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing. — Johan Huizinga

How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance -- the one value that is indispensable in creating community. — Barbara Jordan

I just want to say that the multiculturalism - and especially the cultural relativism which is even worse than multiculturalism, the concept that all cultures are equal - is the worst recipe for any society. — Geert Wilders

A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash; They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods. — W. H. Auden

The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive. — Fred Polak

Humanity And Society Quotes

No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design. — Jacque Fresco

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. — Nelson Mandela

Humanizing birth means understanding that the woman giving birth is a human being, not a machine and not just a container for making babies. Showing women-half of all people-that they are inferior and inadequate by taking away their power to give birth is a tragedy for all society. — Marsden Wagner

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Quincy Adams

Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to. — Emile Durkheim

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote...that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. — Samuel Adams

We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it's legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines. — Dianne Feinstein

We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. — Frances Harper

The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones. — Northrop Frye

Government And Society Quotes

History will judge societies and governments - and their institutions - not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless. — Cesar Chavez

When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. — Edward Bernays

The John Birch Society is Communism's greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution. — Nikita Khrushchev

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. — John Adams

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man. — John Locke

To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals. — Mark Twain

Community connectedness is not just about warm fuzzy tales of civic triumph. In measurable and well-documented ways, social capital makes an enormous difference in our lives...Social capital makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy. — Robert D. Putnam

It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. — Robert H. Jackson

I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man. — Thomas Jefferson

Development Of Society Quotes

A global human society, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable — Thabo Mbeki

If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled. — Elizabeth Blackwell

Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society. — Angela Davis

We do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest — Thabo Mbeki

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future. — Confucius

Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love. — Morihei Ueshiba

I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed - geared toward improving our entire society. — Laurene Powell Jobs

The ego must be developed, not for its own sake, but because it is needed by society. If you are only interested in self-realization then you cannot make a good painting. To do this you have to have thought about forming, and about how ideas of forming stem from history. — Joseph Beuys

Class war is not the cause of social progress; it is a disease developed in the course of social progress. The cause of the disease is the inability to subsist, and the result of the disease is war. — Sun Yat-sen

In any given society the authority of man over man runs in inverse proportion to the intellectual development of that society. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Women In Society Quotes

Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated. — Saddam Hussein

The naked female body is treated so weirdly in society. It's like people are constantly begging to see it, but once they do, someone's a hoe. — Lena Horne

Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free. I want to free the Arab soul, sense and body with my poetry. The relationships between men and women in our society are not healthy. — Nizar Qabbani

When women thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations are given a better start in life. — Kofi Annan

Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt. — Thomas Sankara

Inequality can be done away with only by establishing a new society, where men and women will enjoy equal rights, resulting from an upheaval in the means of production and in all social relations. Thus, the status of women will improve only with the elimination of the system that exploits them. — Thomas Sankara

My dream would be a multicultural society, one that is diverse and where every man, woman and child are treated equally. I dream of a world where all people of all races work together in harmony. — Nelson Mandela

Our religion has defined a position for women (in society): motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can't. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don't accept the concept of motherhood. — Sayings

Until we reach equality in education, we can't reach equality in the larger society. — Sonia Sotomayor

Menstrual blood is the only source of blood that is not traumatically induced. Yet in modern society, this is the most hidden blood, the one so rarely spoken of and almost never seen, except privately by women. — Judy Grahn

Problems In Society Quotes

The problem in society is not kids not knowing science. The problem is adults not knowing science. They outnumber kids 5 to 1, they wield power, they write legislation. When you have scientifically illiterate adults, you have undermined the very fabric of what makes a nation wealthy and strong. — Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society. — Vikram Sarabhai

If you had a free society you couldn't get people to go to war, if you had an intelligent type of upbringing in ones children. They would say; There must be many other ways of solving problems other then killing people. — Jacque Fresco

One of the problems we're facing is, in my view, that there are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. — Maajid Nawaz

We must overcome...all forms of racism. The problem of intolerance should be dealt with as a whole: every time a minority is persecuted and marginalized...the good of the whole society is in danger. — Pope Francis

We live in a society that penalizes highly creative individuals for their non-conformist autonomy. This makes the teaching of problem solving in design both discouraging and difficult. A...student (has) massive blocks against new ways of thinking, engendered by some 16 years of mis-education. — Victor Papanek

The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with ... dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it. — John Dewey

But alas, the most terrifying aspect of the whole fascist episode is the dark fact that most of its poisons are generated not by evil men or evil peoples, but by quite ordinary men in search of an answer to the baffling problems that beset every society. — John T. Flynn

So instead of investing your time in a passion, you’ve sold your life to work for an uncaring machine that doesn’t understand you. That’s the problem with our society. And what’s the reward? Go home and get a big TV. — Joe Rogan

People Writing About Individuals And Society

Name	Quotes	Likes
Karl Marx quotes on capitalism, leadership and money	406	7911
Haniel Long quotes on love, friendship and life	13	130
Simone de Beauvoir quotes on gender, love and freedom	342	3104
John Mearsheimer quotes on education, communism and politics	49	113
Mahatma Gandhi quotes on education, leadership and success	3167	39957
Sherman Alexie quotes on education, love and friendship	199	808

More Individuals And Society Quotes

One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery. — Wallace Stegner

By 'socialism' I mean a classless society in which the State has disappeared, production is cooperative, and no man has political or economic power over another. The touchstone would be the extent to which each individual could develop his own talents and personality. — Dwight Macdonald

To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged. — Sayings

It is my view that our society can be no more stable than the foundation of individual family units upon which it rests. Our government, our institutions, our schools...indeed, our way of life are dependent on healthy marriages and loyalty to the vulnerable little children around our feet. — James Dobson

Agency has become a catch word. In a way, this intoxication with ‘agency’ is the product of liberal individualism. The ability of individuals to fashion themselves, to change their live, is given ideological priority over the relation within which they themselves are actually formed, situated, and sustained. — Talal Asad

My whole theory for the improvement of society is based on a belief in the discipline and the education of the individual to self-control and right doing, for the sake of right doing. I have never seen fundamental improvements imposed from the top by ordinances and laws. — Ida Tarbell

My view... would be that we are entering upon a new and interim society which is neither capitalist nor socialist, but in which we can achieve central planning without loss of individual initiative, by the mere process of absorbing initiative in the function of planning. — John Grierson

The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

A society that relies on generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than barter. Trust lubricates social life. Networks of civic engagement also facilitate coordination and communication and amplify information about the trustworthiness of other individuals. — Robert D. Putnam

In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate. — Ayn Rand

Government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of the government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state. — John C. Calhoun

In the civil society, the individual is recognized and accepted as more than an abstract statistic or faceless member of some group; rather, he is a unique, spiritual being with a soul and a conscience. — Mark Levin

The mischievous idea that all public needs should be satisfied by compulsory organization and that all the means that individuals are willing to devote to pubic purposes should be under the control of government, is wholly alien to the basic principles of a free society. — Friedrich August von Hayek

In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives. — Jared Diamond

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. — Randolph Bourne

Institutions provide procedures through which human conduct is patterned, compelled to go, in grooves deemed desirable by society. And this trick is performed by making these grooves appear to the individual as the only possible ones. — Peter L. Berger

The traitor of other races is generally confined to the mediocre or irresponsible individual, but, unfortunately, the traitors among the Negro race are generally to be found among the men with the highest place in education and society, the fellows who call themselves leaders. — Marcus Garvey

Nostalgia is a form of depression both for a society and an individual. — Abbie Hoffman

In the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs. — Ferdinand De Saussure

[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy. — Michael Parenti

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