Top 100 Good Society Quotes
#1. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual.
C.S. Lewis
#2. For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.
Oscar Wilde
#3. It may be, in the end, that a good society is defined more by how people treat strangers than by how they treat those they know.
James Surowiecki
#4. Philanthropy is an important subject of liberal education because it examines the role of good works in shaping our conceptions of the good society and the good life.
Robert L. Payton
#5. And the matron sighed over the destiny of ladies in good society, whose moral judgement led them to love unabashedly and whose depravity led them to pay for it.
Michelle Franklin
#6. There is a difference between a good society and a society that fakes goodness.
Kirtida Gautam
#7. 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
#8. The most vulgar slang is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be the evidence of cultivation.
Emily Post
#9. The sign of a good society is where talent is respected.
Irrfan Khan
#10. In a good society, people are interested in the hard lives of the workers, not in the easy lives of the artists and models!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#11. Intolerance, discourtesy and harshness ... are taboo in all good society and are surely contrary to the spirit of democracy.
Mahatma Gandhi
#12. The sign of a good society is one that protect its weakest. The strong can always look after themselves.
Dave Courtney
#14. I think one thing with Sweden is that in some way the Swedish society is a very good society, almost perfect on the surface. That is something that makes the writers forced to see what is underneath the surface, because it's always something underneath the surface, of course.
Alexander Ahndoril
#15. The economy is much bigger than the market. We will not be able to build a good economy - nor a good society - unless we look at the vast expanse beyond the market.
Ha-Joon Chang
#16. We may not agree on what a good society is, but... we will never have one until we realize that the public we complain about is us.
Kenneth L. Woodward
#17. the good society would have a low rate of inheritance of social status and correspondingly low variations in income and wealth.
Gregory Clark
#18. I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o'clock.
Oscar Wilde
#19. Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.
Thomas Paine
#20. [God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop.
C.S. Lewis
#21. Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.
Edmund Leach
#22. Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
Walter E. Williams
#23. What makes for the good society is a sound economy. Without it, all the rest falls apart.
Llewellyn Rockwell
#24. The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.
Russell Kirk
#25. The perfect society to which we aspire in theory may become a powerful enemy of the good society we can become in fact.
Mark Sagoff
#26. The Y2K bug is a genuine technical concern, consuming the energies of many specialists. But the prophecies of doom represent a broader worldview using the bug as a news hook. In this vision, the good society is a stable society, undisrupted by innovation, ambition or outside influences.
Virginia Postrel
#27. Any good society survives on a circulation of favours.
Aravind Adiga
#28. I had escaped from my prior partisan mind-set (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later) and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.28
Jonathan Haidt
#30. There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.
George Bernard Shaw
#31. Consideration for others is the basis of a good life, a good society.
Confucius
#32. Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
Oscar Wilde
#33. Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal - you sockdologizing old man-trap.
Tom Taylor
#34. I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.
Stendhal
#35. It is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another's toe in good society, do you think it is taken as an insult?
Lady Hester Stanhope
#36. Baseball, like Pericles' Athens (or any other good society), is simultaneously democratic and aristrocratic. Anyone can enjoy it, but the more you apply yourself, the more you enjoy it.
George Will
#37. Education must be seen as at least partially an effort to produce the good human being, to foster the good life and the good society."46
Jonathan Haidt
#38. The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.
Walter Lippmann
#39. Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.
Robert Bork
#40. The Ten Commandments are the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society. But such a society cannot be created or maintained if it is not based on truth.
Dennis Prager
#41. [I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies.
Edward Abbey
#42. We live in a vastly complex society which has been able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to suspect we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty.
Euell Gibbons
#43. All the collaborators of storytelling, in film and television, have to be partly self-centered because they need to do their work the best they can, and that's what makes them really good at what they do, but then they also have to be a part of the socialist society, for the greater good.
Ray McKinnon
#44. It's cool because you get to see that some of these women are there because they should be. They're actually not good people to be in society. And then, other people are there because they just made a really retarded mistake.
Laura Prepon
#45. I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those core issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society.
Barack Obama
#46. We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out the mouths of starving babes.
H. Rider Haggard
#47. I don't see how it's doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams and clear memories of hating them.
Paul Lockhart
#48. If one can know how good a city is by its smell, one should know how good a society is by the women's status.
Santosh Kalwar
#49. Asked what role he believes art plays in society, Baselitz replied, 'The same role as a good shoe, nothing more.
Georg Baselitz
#50. The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners ...
Natalie Goldberg
#51. To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and that it may someday be possible for people to live in a society fit for free, fully human individuals, a thorough education in the nature of language, its uses and abuses, seems indispensable.
Aldous Huxley
#52. Law is for the society; love is for the individual. Law is how you behave with others; love is how you behave with yourself. Love is an inner flowering; law is an outward performance. Because you live with people you have to be lawful, but that is not enough - good, but not enough.
Rajneesh
#53. The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism
Martin Luther King Jr.
#54. Society is what beats me. Alone I can be pretty good, but let me go among people and there's the devil to pay.
Saul Bellow
#55. I want to help middle-school girls stay interested in math and be good at it, and see it as friendly and accessible and not this scary thing. Everyone else in society tells them it's not for them. It's for nerdy white guys with pocket protectors.
Danica McKellar
#56. Because I am a one-legged, black, short, woman I had to spend every day of my life pushing against what society told me I should be. I had to sell my value every day of my life. Confidence is what enables us to push back on reality. Once you get good at that, you can use it to live your joy.
Bonnie St. John
#57. If we don't figure out a way to create equity, real equity, of opportunity and access, to good schools, housing, health care, and decent paying jobs, we're not going to survive as a productive and healthy society.
Tim Wise
#58. The onus of Connecting rightly, Conceiving brightly, Conveying quietly, and Concluding wisely are the capatencies (capacity and competence) of man
Priyavrat Thareja
#59. In fact, corporations are the infants of our society - they know very little except how to grow (though they're very good at that), and they howl when you set limits. Socializing them is the work of politics. It's about time we took it up again.
Bill McKibben
#60. Our society is very, very good at developing certain types of skills and certain types of genius. We are fantastically good at identifying and developing athletic skills - better than we are, really, at almost anything else. We are quite good at developing and rewarding inventiveness.
Bill James
#61. If, in the present chaotic and shameful struggle for existence, when organized society offers a premium on greed, cruelty, and deceit, men can be found who stand aloof and almost alone in their determination to work for good rather than gold
Lucy Parsons
#62. Yes," she thought, "nature is the refuge and home for women: they have no public career - no aim nor end beyond their domestic circle; but they can extend that, and make all the creations of nature their own, to foster and do good to.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
#63. Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society.
George MacDonald
#64. Any entrepreneur worth their salt knows that their brand is worthless if it doesn't somehow contribute to society or the overall good of the planet.
Lynda Resnick
#65. There is a cannibalism that's loose in our society in which public figures such as the Clintons could try to come into this town and do something good for this country and then they get hammered away even though they're trying to do the right thing.
David Gergen
#66. No temperance society which is well officered and which has the real good of our fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its temperance hall.
Mark Twain
#67. The girl with a moustache" they called me every now and then
"It's about time you wax your arms" those who "cared" said
I faced the fears of the dreaded thread on my face
To succumb every other week to the world's ways
Sanhita Baruah
#68. The marvel of television is one means that is being used to try and turn society into a uniform mush. The manipulation and thought control inexorably continues. Mankind is being rinsed out into a group of dull moralists who convince themselves that they are good people.
Erich Von Daniken
#69. I think something innate in us understands that seeking the good of society is usually best for the individual as well. Humankind is noble, when we give it the chance to be. That nobility is something that exists independent of any god's decree.
Brandon Sanderson
#70. In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.
Samuel Johnson
#71. The belief that we are defending the highest good of the mothers of our race and the ultimate welfare of society makes every sacrifice seem trivial, every duty a pleasure.
Carrie Chapman Catt
#72. To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives.
Janine Di Giovanni
#73. Western society has many flaws, and it is good for an educated person to have thought some of these through, even at the expense of losing a lecture or two to tear gas.
Robert B. Laughlin
#74. I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society.
Virginia Gildersleeve
#75. The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, takes responsibility for his actions, treats others with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and avoids it. Without the hidden conspiracy of goodwill, society would not endure an hour.
Kenneth Rexroth
#77. Feminism is not a one size fits all kinda thing but anyone can wear it.
Jess
#78. There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.
Joseph Addison
#79. It is only when the individual is good that society will progress. When the society and the nation is based on the observance of human values.
Sathya Sai Baba
#80. Irrespective of any political party, I am a supporter of good people who want to do something for the society.
Kapil Dev
#81. Whether people work for themselves or for others, they increasingly want to understand how their actions are contributing to a greater good.They will want to be engaged in work that contributes to society.
Michael Strong
#82. Why does society always have to move on to something new when the old still works just as fucking good, you know?
J.M. Darhower
#83. I've always been a bit of a mix between art and technology. I used to paint a lot, but I'm not very good with my hands. It has always been a fusion between my computer gaming interests and being exposed to the rich data of society that we live in.
Aaron Koblin
#84. No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts off from its youth severs its lifeline.
Kofi Annan
#85. What's good for individual could be bad for society but what's good for society that will be good for individual and there is always need to choose what right for society because if it is right for society then it is right for individual.
Zaman Ali
#86. However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly.
Frances Wright
#87. In truth, a State whose society is not sovereign is no sovereign State at all. Such is the case when a society has no chance to decide the common good, and when it has been denied the basic right to share in power and responsibility
Pope John Paul II
#88. Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.
Richard Dawkins
#89. As intelligent and responsible filmmakers, working in a free society, we have a duty to ensure that our chosen medium is a force for good. Especially in this ever-more complex and difficult world.
David Puttnam
#91. In any event, we must remember that it's not the blinded wrongdoers who are primarily responsible for the triumph of evil in the world, but the spiritually sighted servants of the good.
Fyodor Stepun
#92. I think it's always good when you're able to, as an actor, allow your work to be some kind of a conduit for social discourse, and an examination of where we are, as a society.
Zachary Quinto
#93. Complacency and ignorance," Zebara suggested, pouring more brandy. "A very good way to keep a large population so tractable the society lacks rebellion." "But
Anne McCaffrey
#94. Society needs a good image of itself. That is the job of the architect.
Walter Gropius
#95. The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.
Ashley Montagu
#96. I believe that communal admiration of individuals is healthy for society. It facilitates, in one way, the base of our universal standard, morals, but also publicly espouses the virtue of certain practices that are kind of like 'inherently good' in some kind of ideas of what the good is.
Jack Gleeson
#97. Fiction, on the whole, and if it is any good, tends to be a subversive element in society.
Fay Weldon
#98. I think that the best things that governments can do for productivity is not whack on new taxes and, if we can get institutions like schools and hospitals functioning better, well that's obviously good for the overall productiveness of our society.
Tony Abbott
#99. If we cannot make a profit, that means we are committing a sort of crime against society. We take society's capital, we take their people, we take their materials, yet without a good profit, we are using precious resources that could be better used elsewhere.
Konosuke Matsushita
#100. Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks.
Rebecca MacKinnon
