Weekend Words: Social
"The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator, which is often socially impressive."
Last weekend, the surviving core members of the legendary Cuban band, The Buena Vista Social Club, played their farewell concert at the Teatro Karl Marx in Havana.
The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator, which is often socially impressive.
—Kenneth Williams, Acid Drops
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority–literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
—Ignazio Silone, The God That Failed
All in all, I am not surprised that the people who want to unravel the social contract start with young adults. Those who are urged to feel afraid, very afraid, have both the greatest sense of independence and the most finely honed skepticism about government.
—Ellen Goodman
The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.
—H. G. Wells, Love and Mr Lewisham
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations and social standing, never can bring about a reform.
—Susan B. Anthony
If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
—Michael Harrington, The Other America
I pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.
—John Waters
Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.
—Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed
Politics [is] the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
—Barry Goldwater
All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
—Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts
Many people consider the things which government does for them as social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism.
—Earl Warren
Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad… but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.
—Thomas Hobbes
It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these value, we do so at our peril.
—J. William Fulbright, Remarks in the Senate, June 29, 1961
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope. . . there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk.
—Thomas Merton
The more we learn of the true nature of non-human animals, especially those with complex brains and corresponding complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man — whether this be in entertainment, as “pets,” for food, in research laboratories, or any of the other uses to which we subject them.
—Jane Goodall
Thus God and Nature linked the general frame,
And bade self-love and social be the same.
—Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
