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Society Quotes

Browse 5174 quotes about Society.

Society Quotes

“The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth century ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.”

Men Society Century Committed Noble Twentieth Century Nineteenth Century Atrocities Noble Man Atrocities Committed Stalin And Hitler

Author:Eric Hoffer

“in the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.”

Lasts Courses Asks Cases Society Century Concern Scientist Forgotten Meaningless Pretext Dizzy Pertinent Pertinent Questions

Author:Arthur Koestler

“The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail once the noble human race could act according to its whims.”

Humans Has Beens Age Past Race Vision Failing Society Century Human Nature Goodness Noble Doctrine Golden Human Race Mischief Whim Golden Age

Author:Jacob Burckhardt

“The private motives of scientists are not the trend of science. The trend of science is made by the needs of society: navigation before the eighteenth century, manufacture thereafter; and in our age I believe the liberation of personality. Whatever the part which scientists like to act, or for that matter which painters like to dress, science shares the aims of our society just as art does.”

Needs Believe Doe Art Made Matter Age I Believe Society Share Century Personality Scientist Aim Dresses Painter Liberation Motive Our Society Trends Navigation

Book:The Common Sense of Science

Source: The Common Sense of Science

“All the great masters in the world have been saying only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it.”

World Mind Has Beens Whole Eye Individual One Thing Society Century Taught Masters Ears Individuality Crowds Following Live Life Wheels Mechanism Listening To Music

Author:Rajneesh

“Now the 21st century approaches and with it the inevitability of change. We must wonder if the American people will find renewal and rejuvenation within themselves, will discover again their capacity for innovation and adaptation. If not, alas, the nation's future will be shaped by sightless forces of history over which Americans will have no control.”

People Ifs America Force Nations Liberty Wonder Society Century Approach Capacity Innovation 21st Century Alas Adaptation Renewal Inevitability Rejuvenation

Author:John Chancellor

“We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?”

“When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“We do not need to invent sustainable human communities. We can learn from societies that have lived sustainably for centuries. We can also model communities after nature's ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.”

“The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built.”

Humans Has Beens Wisdom Body Lasts Moral Society Economic Modern Century Civilization Essentials Elements Achievement Intellectual Built Foundation Structure Technological Human Civilization

Book:Human Action

Source: Human Action

“The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.”

May Seems Age Society Century Disease Environmental Twentieth Century Powerlessness Power Failure

Author:Russell Baker

“In that, we agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society. In my case, the ability to allocate capital would have had little utility unless I lived in a rich, populous country in which enormous quantities of marketable securities were traded and were sometimes ridiculously mispriced. And fortunately for me, that describes the U.S. in the second half of the last century.”

Should Littles Said Country Sometimes Lasts Ability Half Cases Rich Society Century Security Huge Flow Fortune Enormous Quantity Utility Andrew Carnegie Enormous Quantities

Author:Warren Buffett

“Widespread caffeine use explains a lot about the twentieth century.”

Use Society Century Twentieth Century Caffeine

Author:Greg Egan