Quotes about Society
The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
— Henry David Thoreau
The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.
— Henry David Thoreau
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?
— Henry David Thoreau
The greater number of men are merely corporals.
— Henry David Thoreau
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
— Henry David Thoreau
They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.
— Henry Ward Beecher
If men were angels, there would be no need of government.
— James Madison
It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.
— John Adams