Top 1200 Societies Quotes & Sayings

Man's destiny is to know, if only because societies with knowledge culturally dominate societies that lack it. Luddites and anti-intellectuals do not master the differential equations of thermodynamics or the biochemical cures of illness. They stay in thatched huts and die young.

I'm really puzzled by why people in societies find it difficult to work collaboratively together with other people in societies.

Societies that exclude the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully to what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).

Wars produce warlike societies, which in turn make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves.

If women can organize missionary societies, temperance societies, and every kind of charitable organization... why not permit them to be ordained to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments of the Church?

Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

Secret Societies have existed among all peoples, savage and civilized, since the beginning of recorded history... It is beyond question that the secret societies of all ages have exercised a considerable degree of political influence.

Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.

We must adjust our value systems and work to modify today's societies, in which economic interests are carried to the extreme and irrationally produce not merely objects, but weapons of war. These societies don't care about the destruction of the planet and mankind as long as they earn profits - it can't go on like this.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

History is driven, over the long haul, by culture - by what men and women honor, cherish, and worship; by what societies deem to be true and good, and by the expressions they give to those convictions in language, literature, and the arts; by what individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

Education can also be used as a soft power and as a soft force to transform societies. When I say transform societies it means we can tackle issues in political, social, cultural, economic areas. These are the most important things.

Talking to each other instead of talking about each other is not some kind of nicey-nice (ph) idea. It's the difference between societies falling apart and societies getting something wonderful done.

The thing about frontiers, it allows the individuals who are best, whether they're men or women or minorities or whatever, to step to the top. So in traditional societies, old world societies, in the United Kingdom if you would; if you were born into the right stratus, the right class, you had the ability to succeed.

I have a fascination for extra-judicial societies and underground cultures, and in situations where justice can only be found outside the law, and how these societies have evolved over the centuries.

Our task is not to make societies safe for globalization, but to make the global system safe for decent societies.

We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before.

When I speak about 'we,' it gets very complex very quickly. Having grown up in the United States, but also being very much a member of Nigerian societies and also different parts of Nigerian societies, I understand that we construct particular 'we's.'

I think we live in a period of profound transformation. Very similar to when we had a transition from agricultural societies to industrial societies.

Honesty . . . is the foundation upon which relationships and many societies are built. Without it . . . there can be no trust. Widespread lying destroys the fabric of democratic societies, in which the necessary assumption is that people mostly tell the truth.

It is one of history's great ironies that capitalists built decent and humane societies on the basis of an amoral approach to the economics of pricing, whereas socialists built exploitative and inhumane societies on the basis of a morally inflamed approach to economics.

Socialism, Communism, clandestine societies, Bible societies... pests of this sort must be destroyed by all means.

Free societies, which allow differences to speak and be heard, and live by intermarriage, commerce, and free migration, and democratic societies, which convert enemies into adversaries and reconcile differences without resort to violence, are societies in which the genocidal temptation is unlikely and even inconceivable.

I think that in free societies, and we're constantly talking about living in free societies, aren't we, in contradiction with unhappy people who live in non-free societies, that the benefit, the dividend of living in a free society is that you say what you think.

I believe all societies, all thriving societies of the future are going to be multicultural societies.

In traditional societies, we have a long legacy of men controlling the body and mind of women. Such societies have valorised motherhood and fabricated concepts like chastity. Women have been the victims of these notions for thousands of years.

Multicultural societies are multi-conflict societies.

Think how different human societies would be if they were based on love rather than justice. But no such societies have ever existed on earth.

The most threatened group in human societies as in animal societies is the unmated male: the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work and he is considered a poor credit risk.

The problem with monasteries, ashrams, convents is these institutions become extremely political. In other words, they're really small societies, and much of what you hope to avoid in societies you find there.

Poverty and scarcity are actually very good for totalitarian societies. They maintain that sense of mobilization that's essential for totalitarian societies.

For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.

Societies in which we are able to unify ourselves around values and ideals and character and how we treat each other and cooperation and innovation, ultimately are gonna be more successful than societies that don't.

In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.

Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states - “fear societies” and “free societies.”… The two societies make up two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external authority. It is premised on a dearth of self-respect. It is cramped … In contrast, the consciousness of freedom … is one of expansiveness, trust of the self, and hope. It is a consciousness of limitless inquiry … It builds up in a citizen a wealth of self-respect.

This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.

The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere.

Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime.

Humans build their societies around consumption of fossil water long buried in the earth, and these societies, being based on temporary resources, face the problem of being temporary themselves.

I think we can expect leaders of Muslim societies to cooperate with each other on many issues just as Western societies cooperate with each other.

Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer.

Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.

We see that there are two different kinds of...societies: (a) parasitic societies and (b) producing societies. The former are those which live from hunting, fishing, or merely gleaning. By their economic activities they do not increase, but rather decrease, the amount of wealth in the world. The second kind of societies, producing societies, live by agricultural and pastoral activities. By these activities they seek to increase the amount of wealth in the world.

While all societies make their own imaginaries (institutions, laws, traditions, beliefs and behaviors), autonomous societies are those that their members are aware of this fact, and explicitly self-institute (????-?????????). In contrast, the members of heteronomous societies attribute their imaginaries to some extra-social authority (i.e. God, ancestors, historical necessity)

History shows that societies where opportunity is safeguarded tend to be societies that are good international citizens.

Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.

So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying to stem the race to disaster. At the other extreme, the richest, most powerful societies in world history, like the United States and Canada, are racing full-speed ahead to destroy the environment as quickly as possible.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.

People who study primate societies make a distinction between two kinds of cultural interactions, agonic and hedonic. In agonic societies, you gain status by asserting dominance over others. In hedonic societies, you gain status by drawing attention to yourself. Open source is a hedonic culture.

I fortunately know very many people, and there are many, many more that I don't know and many politicians who stand up for the same values of democracy of liberal societies, of open societies of respect for the dignity of man.

The American sense of the importance, the fundamental importance of the black-white dichotomy, comes out of societies founded in the era of the African slave trade, so societies like ours, that is to say the western hemisphere, the Caribbean and so forth, we share a lot in common.

Societies who do not care for their young people and old people are decadent, decaying societies.

The Princeton economist Alan Krueger has demonstrated that societies with higher levels of income inequality are societies with lower levels of social mobility.

On the future of the U.S., or of Western civilization in general, I tend to be quite pessimistic. I would say that today I see most of the symptoms of societies on the brink of collapse, not just in the U.S., but in the tightly interconnected societies of Western civilization - now essentially world civilization.

In a cross-cultural study of 173 societies (by Herbert Barry and L. M. Paxson of the University of Pittsburgh) 76 societies typically had mother and infant sharing a bed; in 42 societies they shared a room but not a bed; and in the remaining 55 societies they shared a room with a bed unspecified. There were no societies in which infants routinely slept in a separate room.

Another view is Western companies chartered in societies that believe in this kind of censorship shouldn't be carrying water for societies that do.

Bearing in mind that "the market" is not an invention of capitalism but that it has existed for thousands of years in many different societies, social justice logically requires that the profits resulting from the operation of markets and infrastructures created by society be equitably shared within societies and in a larger context within the human family.

[We should] stop the immigration to our societies - because we have had more than enough Islam in our societies.

When we are unwilling to draw clear moral lines between free societies and fear societies, when we are unwilling to call the former good and the latter evil, we will not be able to advance the cause of peace because peace cannot be disconnected from freedom.