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| The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittenly conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. | | George Orwell | |
| The definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. | | Adlai E. Stevenson | |
| The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum. | | Adlai E. Stevenson | |
| The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money. | | A. J. Liebling | |
| The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death | | Gore Vidal | |
| The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security. | | Thomas Paine | |
| The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head. | | Jean Cocteau | |
| The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignore, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned Things is the individual human being. The social engineers, statistician, psychologist, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. the psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots. | | Robert Anton Wilson | |
| The national task that had been incumbent upon me for 18 years is hereby confirmed. | | Charles de Gaulle | |
| The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscapes | | Eric Hoffer | |
| The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members. | | Oscar Wilde | |
| There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. | | Nelson Mandela | |
| There was much in such a society that was primitive and insecure and it certainly could never measure up to the demands of the present epoch. But in such a society are contained the seeds of revolutionary democracy in which none will be held in slave | | Nelson Mandela | |
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| What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them! | | Henrik Ibsen | |
| What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals. | | Thomas Jefferson | |
When they turn the pages of history,
when these days have passed long ago--
will they read of us with sadness
for the seeds that we let grow? | | Neil Peart | |
| Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail | | Abraham Lincoln | |
| Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. | | Frederick Douglass | |
| You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer | | Frank Zappa | |
