A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A society that forgets about art risks loslng its soul.”
“A society that forgets how to grieve will repeat its cruelties with a smile.”
“A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.”
Source: Time Enough for Love
“A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility.”
“A society that has conquered its biases and assumptions, has mastered order.”
Source: Bulldozer on Duty
“A society that has made 'nostalgia' a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.”
Source: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
“A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.”
Source: Global Challenges in the 21st Century
“A society that has no respect, no regard for its bards, its historians, its storytellers, is a society in steep decline, a society that has lost its very soul and may never find its way.”
Source: The Ghost of Rabbie Burns: An American Poet's Journey Through Scotland
“A society that has no wrongs will soon have no rights.”
“A society that has to burn witches to hold itself together is a society that has already failed, and just doesn't know it yet.”
Source: All the Birds in the Sky
“A society that is in its higher circles and middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.”
“A society that is not founded on morality falls apart and becomes easy prey to puritan cults such as Islam that on the surface, promote family values and morality.”
“A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.”
“A society that lives by organized greed or by systemic terrorism and oppression (they come too much the same thing in the end) will always tend to be violent because it is in a state of persistent disorder and moral confusion. The first principle of valid political action in such a society then becomes non-cooperation with its disorder, its injustices, and more particularly with its deep commitment to untruth."
(from Thomas Merton's introduction to Gandhi on Non-Violence, pg 9. Italics original.)”
Source: Gandhi on Non-violence
“A society that places a low value on its mothers and the process of birth will suffer an array of negative repercussions for doing so. Good beginnings make a positive difference in the world, so it is worth our while to provide the best possible care for mothers and babies throughout this extraordinarily influential part of life.”
Source: Birth Matters: How What We Don't Know About Nature, Bodies, and Surgery Can Hurt Us
“A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.”
“A society that produces suicide murderers in quantity is essentially committing its own suicide.”
“A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality or freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today's less well off to become tomorrow's rich, and in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a richer and fuller life.”
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”
“A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.”
“A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.”
Source: Working and Thinking on the Waterfront: A Journal, June 1958-May 1959
“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.”
“A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort ... is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.”
“A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment-a society that sets up a conflict between its edicts and the requirements of man’s nature—is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.”
Source: The virtue of selfishness: a new concept of egoism
“A society that sees humans as soulless is a society that sees human beings as being of no more worth than machines. And machines are simply tools, objects, to be used for the benefit of the state...”
Source: Sanatana Dharma: The Eternal Natural Way
“A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.”
“A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.”
“A society where emotions come last and selfishness is considered blessed, or placed first before anything; cannot be expected to produce good fruits!”
Source: Treatise Upon The Misconceptions of Narcissism
“A society where everyone is following his own unique path has a much better chance to find the truth than the society where everyone is following some known cliché paths!”
“A society where feminine beauty is defined not by the human self on genuine intellectual and sentimental grounds, but by a computer software on the grounds of economic interest, is more dead than alive. It is a society of human bodies, not human beings.”
Source: The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality
“A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live; a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go: to stay here is death.”
Source: A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
“A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future.”
Source: The Blessing of Family: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis
“A society which allows an abominable event to burgeon from its dung heap and grow on its surface is like a man who lets a fly crawl unheeded across his face or saliva dribble from his mouth -- either epileptic or dead.”
Source: Cool memories
“A society which believes in a worthwhile future saves in the present so as to invest in the future. Contemporary Western society spends in the present and piles up debts for the future, ravages the environment, and leaves its grandchildren to cope with the results as best they can.”
Source: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society: SPCK Classic
“A society which denies the heart its role becomes, in very short order, a heartless society.”
“A society which devastates its homelands’ nature no more has the right to live in that territories!”
“A society which discards those who are weak and non-productive risks exaggerating the development of reason, organisation, aggression and the desire to dominate. It becomes a society without a heart, without kindness - a rational and sad society, lacking celebration, divided within itself and given to competition, rivalry and, finally, violence.”
Source: Man and Woman, God Made Them
“A society which has poor people on its streets is a failed society!”
“A society which is clamouring for choice, which is filled with many articulate groups, each urging its own brand of salvation, its own variety of economic philosophy, will give each new generation no peace until all have chosen or gone under, unable to bear the conditions of choice.”
Source: Coming of Age in Samoa
“A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability.”
Source: Democracy And Education
“A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.”
Source: Democracy And Education
“A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything.”
“A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.”
“A society which sees her modesty or her "hang-ups" as a problem is necessarily a society which will not be able to get him to commit. Conversely, a society which respected modesty, or what now goes by "hang-ups", was one in which men were obligated.”
Source: A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue
“A society whose ideas are different but whose faces are similar is always superior to a society whose ideas are the same but whose faces are different!”
“A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.”
“A society whose moral ideas, inhibit their own defense will always suffer defeat by the very predators they deem immoral. In any conflict the boundaries of behavior are defined by the party that cares the least about morality.”
“A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.”
Source: To Have Or To Be?
“A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.”
“A society will manufacture an image of progress and locate it in the direction it wishes to take us.”