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Social Contract Quotes

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Social Contract Quotes

“They sit here in the darkness, trusting. That the coffee will be hot and unpoisoned. That no raging madman will come in with a gun or bomb. It leaves him breathless at times, how much faith people put in one another. So fragile, the social contract: we will all stand by the rules, move with care and gentleness, invest in the infrastructure, agree with the penalties of failure. That this man driving his truck down the street won't, on a whim, angle into the plate glass and end things. That the president won't let his hand hover over the red button and, in moment of rage or weakness, explode the world. The invisible tissue of civilization: so thin, so easily rendable. It's a miracle that it exists at all.”

PeopleHumanityTrustCivilizationRulesLawsFragilitySocial Contract
Book:Arcadia
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“You are not good for your own sake. That probably isn’t even possible. You are good as a courtesy to everyone around you. Keeping a promise or breaking it, telling the truth or lying, matters to those around you. So there is good you can do and always do again. You do not have to believe you are good in order to act well in any specific case. You never lose that option.”

ActionValuesHonestyGoodnessBehaviorAccountabilitySocial Contract
Book:Jack
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“I know what Bert is going through. It's the loneliest feeling in the world. It's like walking down an empty street listening to your own footsteps. But all you have to do is knock on any door and say, 'If you let me in, I'll live the way you want me to live and I'll think the way you want me to think.' And all the blinds will go up and the doors will open and you'll never be lonely ever again.”

IndividualitySocial ContractStanding Up For What Is Right
Author:Jerome Lawrence, Robert Edwin Lee
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“Like the Founders, the Conservative also recognizes in society a harmony of interests, as Adam Smith put it, and rules of cooperation that have developed through generations of human experience and collective reasoning that promote the betterment of the individual and society. This is characterized as ordered liberty, the social contract, or the civil society.”

Civil SocietySocial ContractAdam Smith
Book:Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
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“Whether you are an individual contributor, manager, or leader, fixing the broken social contract between people and work starts with you. When you are able to make your work more enjoyable and purposeful, that possibility will be greater for others.”

You Can Do ItPurposeful LivingSocial ContractJob SatisfactionHappiness At WorkplaceHappiness At WorkSucceess
Book:Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World
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“Does it seem to you impossible to imagine anything more inextricable than the social contract, when you think of the frightful number of relations that it must regulate -- something like squaring the circle, or finding perpetual motion? That is the reason why, wearied of the struggle, you fall back on absolutism and force.”

ThinkingDoeReasonSeemsFallForceSocialNumbersStruggleImagineImpossibleFindingsRelationCirclesReason WhyContractsPerpetualFall BackSocial ContractAbsolutismPerpetual Motion
Book:General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century
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“Locke had illegitimately selected those parts of man he needed for his social contract and suppressed all the rest, a theoretically unsatisfactory procedure and a practically costly one. The bourgeois is the measure of the price paid, he who most of all cannot afford to look to his real self, who denies the existence of the thinly boarded-over basement in him, who is most made over for the purposes of a society that does not even promise him perfection or salvation but merely buys him off.”

MenLooksDoeMadeRealSelfPurposeSocialExistenceNeededPromisePerfectionPaidSalvationDenyContractsProceduresBourgeoisSelectedBasementsReal SelfSocial Contract
Book:Closing of the American Mind
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“At the turn of the [21st] century it was really Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy. And it's a kind of capitalism that's totally self-defeating because it's so narrow. It's a winner-take-all capitalism that's not sustaining.”

PeopleIfsGivingWellsKindStillsSelfProblemTurnsSocialEconomyCenturyInformationCapitalismAdvertisingMaking MoneyWinnerContractsGoogleFormal21st CenturySustainingSocial Contract
Author:Jaron Lanier
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“The danger is not only that these austerity measures are killing the European economies but also that they threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies - not just directly by threatening the livelihoods of so many people and pushing the economy into a downward spiral, but also indirectly by undermining the legitimacy of the political system through this backdoor rewriting of the social contract.”

PeoplePoliticalSocialEconomyDemocracyDangerKillingPushingContractsThreateningPolitical SystemsLivelihoodSpiralsLegitimacyRewritingUnderminingAusteritySocial ContractDownward SpiralBackdoor
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“Etiquette is about all of human social behavior. Behavior is regulated by law when etiquette breaks down or when the stakes are high - violations of life, limb, property and so on. Barring that, etiquette is a little social contract we make that we will restrain some of our more provocative impulses in return for living more or less harmoniously in a community.”

HumansLittlesLawSocialCommunityBreakReturnBehaviorPropertyMannersImpulseContractsStakesBreaking DownLimbsEtiquetteViolationProvocativeSocial ContractSocial BehaviorLiving More
Author:Judith Martin
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“Throughout the 1980s, we did hear too much about individual gain and the ethos of selfishness and greed. We did not hear enough about how to be a good member of a community, to define the common good and to repair the social contract. And we also found that while prosperity does not trickle down from the most powerful to the rest of us, all too often indifference and even intolerance do.”

DoeEnoughFoundIndividualSocialCommunityWealthPoorPowerfulCommonPowerRichToo MuchMembersGainsGreedProsperitySelfishnessIndifferenceMost PowerfulContractsIntoleranceRich And PoorCommon GoodEthosSocial ContractTrickle DownSelfishness And Greed
Author:Hillary Clinton
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“There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any “social contract” or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.”

KnowsMenWorldWould BeSocialCitiesDivineFundamentalsContractsMetaphysicsInitialsAestheticsCovenantEntrancesSocial ContractConfiding
Book:Real Presences
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“24.9 percent of American children live in poverty, while the proportions in Germany, France and Italy are 8.6, 7.4 and 10.5 percent. And once born on the wrong side of the tracks, Americans are more likely to stay there than their counterparts in Europe. Those born to better-off families are more likely to stay better off. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and a serfdom of the poor - the inevitable result of a twenty-year erosion of its social contract.”

YearsChildrenAmericaSocialSidesBornPoorResultsPovertyRichPercentEuropeTwentiesTrackDevelopingFranceInevitableGermanyProportionContractsBetter OffAristocracyCounterpartsErosionSocial Contract
Author:Will Hutton
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“I am prepared to maintain that Honesty is essentially an anarchistic and disintegrating force in society, that communities are held together and the progress of civilization made possible only by vigorous and sometimes even, violent Lying; that the Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie and humbug themselves and one another for the general Good.”

HumansMadeSometimesTogetherLyingForceSocialCommunityHuman BeingsProgressHonestyCivilizationPreparedViolentContractsConspiracyVigorousSocial ContractHumbug
Author:H. G. Wells
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“The first right of every human being is the right of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our Constitution.”

FirstsHumansSelfGovernmentSocialHuman BeingsRightsCitizensConstitutionDefenseContractsMeaninglessSelf DefenseSocial Contract
Author:Larry Craig
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“In Europe there's an dangerous growth of ultra xenophobia which is pretty threatening to any one who remembers the history of Europe... and an attack on the remnants of the welfare state. It's hard to interpret the austerity-in-the-midst-of-recession policy as anything other than attack on the social contract.”

HardStatesRememberSocialGrowthDangerousPolicyEuropeWelfareMidstContractsThreateningRecessionsXenophobiaWelfare StateRemnantsAusterityUltrasSocial Contract
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“I try to look at the evolution of these utopian claims. In the late '60s there was an assumption that the wealth generated by industry would be taxed and then put into social programs and it would provide a baseline of stability that would allow people to have the time for self-expression; and that social contract has eroded over the last four decades and now it's every person for themselves.”

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Author:Astra Taylor
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“There is a social contract in "Fight Club" and in "Choke" where the protagonist has deceived a whole bunch of people. In "Choke" it's all of these people who think that they've saved his life, and really care about him because they've embraced him and they've been his saviors. In "Fight Club" it's all of these people who are dying of various diseases, and they thought that Edward Norton was also dying so they allowed him really strong pent-up emotions.”

PeopleThinkingWholeCareFightingStrongSocialEmotionDyingDiseaseVariousClubsSavedBunchContractsSaviorDeceivedChokeProtagonistsSocial ContractPeople Who Are Dying
Author:Chuck Palahniuk
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“If you put Canada into $1.5 trillion in debt and interest rates go up just 200 basis points, you cannot provide the services to 36 million people that were guaranteed to them in the social contract they have with Canada. That's a very, very scary prospect. You can't burden this economy with that much debt. The risk you take on is insurmountable. You have to assume for the next 50 years that rates don't go up? That's insane. That's irresponsible. That's stupid.”

PeopleIfsYearsNextSocialInterestMillionsEconomyRiskStupidBasesAssumingRateBurdenScaryDebtInsaneCanadaContractsIrresponsibleInterest RateInsurmountableSocial Contract
Author:Kevin O'Leary
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“In America, one of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract, and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people.”

PeopleHas BeensTwoAmericaForceSocialPartyClassOffersMajorsEverydayDecadesResistanceContractsCollaborationDestroyingDedicatedExtremistDonorsSocial Contract
Author:Bill Moyers
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“The 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to apply to former slaves to ensure that they are treated like all other citizens. It never did have anything to do with gay marriage. It was never intended to have anything to do with gay marriage or animal marriage or any other kind of social contract. It was specific to slavery, and after the Civli War.”

KindWarSocialAnimalCitizensGaySlaverySlaveTreatedFormerCivil WarContractsAmendmentsGay MarriageSocial Contract14th Amendment
Author:Rush Limbaugh
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“I do consider the human capacity for violence is the central issue of the social contract. In boxing we have a peculiarly civilized form, in that boxers don't screech and holler. They don't use weapons. All of this seems to me quite amazing, because it is so disciplined, so controlled. It's ritualized, but absolutely genuine. And the cultural structure built around that ritual is absolutely fascinating to me. And it seems to me that boxing is one of those structures that is designed to promote harmony. I think that it is a stove that contains that fire in us and makes it safe and useful.”

ThinkingViolenceHarmonyBoxingCivilizedRitualSocial Contract
Author:Katherine Dunn
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“The theory of social contracts extends as far back as Plato. However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.”

ThinkingWayGovernmentPoliticalSocialDemocracyCenturyCitizensConceptsPhilosopherContracts18th CenturyHobbesSocial ContractRepublicanismPavingPolitical ThinkingPaving The WayJean Jacques RousseauJacques Rousseau
Author:Simon Mainwaring
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“In fact, I believe the first companies that make an effort to develop an authentic, transparent, and meaningful social contract with their fans and customers will turn out to be the ones that are the most successful in the future. While brands that refuse to make the effort will lose stature and customer loyalty.”

FirstsBelieveFactsTurnsI BelieveSocialLosesEffortCompanySuccessfulFansRefuseCustomersLoyaltyMeaningfulBrandsContractsTransparentStatureCustomer LoyaltySocial Contract
Author:Simon Mainwaring
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