This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"`Tis not without reason that [Man] seeks out and is willing to join in Society with others who are already united or have a mind to unite for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the general Name, Property. The great and chief end, therefore, of Men’s uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of Property." - Abraham Lincoln
"In the field of modern cosmology, the first principle is called “the Cosmological Principle.” It says that the universe has no center, that it has the same properties throughout. Every place in the universe has, in this sense, equal rights. How can the human race, which has evolved in a universe of such fundamental equality, fail to strive for a society without violence and terror? How can we fail to build a world in which the rights due to every human being from birth are respected?" - Fang Lizhe
"In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both sides will lose. It is a form of mutual suicide; and I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on an endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations." - Douglas MacArthur
"We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society." - Judith Martin, née Perlman, pen name Miss Manners
"In the so-called Western secular democracy… a divorce has been effected between politics and religion, and as a result of this secularization, the society and particularly its politically active elements have ceased to attach much or any importance to morality or ethics." - Abu’l A’la Mawdudi
"The degradation of our society today stems mainly from the lack of awareness of what is within us. Being ignorant of our true nature, we seek external solutions to the problems rooted within. In our search for security and prosperity we have abandoned ourselves and are constantly drifting away from human values and virtues." - Bibhuti Mazumder
"The world’s inability to achieve a unity of thought and to end spiritual divisions is the real reason society is so deeply unhappy, so poor in ideas and enthusiasm, and so lacking in shared spiritual concepts which are its own inner joy, nobility and strength." - Barrett McGurn
"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift or law there is far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a national philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society." -
"The sense of sharing a common fate, which is the basis of enduring comradeship and love, is also the firmest foundation for a free society." - Henry Alonso Meyers
"Of late, the factual world has been buried under agnosticism, and its mystery has deepened as human society has come to cover a wider territory. Usually the statements of people who have witnessed the same incident contradict one another. An extraordinary incident that shocks the whole society always contains an eternal mystery." - Yukio Mishima
"The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them." - Maria Montessori
"Is there no such thing as moral responsibility and social accountability at all? Is every mean or vicious thing that you or I as ordinary individuals do, not sin, but rather as expression of “illness”? Who would seriously hold that a society could long endure which consistently subscribed to this flaccid doctrine?" - O. Hobart Mowrer, fully Orval Hobart Mowrer
"Organized religion is too respectable, too much at home in America, and so too much inclined to abdicate its responsibility as a judge of society." - Herbert J. Muller
"Poverty is not merely the lack of adequate financial resources. It entails a more profound kind of deprivation, a denial of full participation in the economic, social, and political life of society and an inability to influence decisions that affect one’s life. It means being powerless in a way that assaults not only one’s pocketbook but also one’s fundamental human dignity. Therefore, we should seek solutions that enable the poor to help themselves through such means as employment. Paternalistic programs which do too much for and too little with the poor are to be avoided." - National Conference of Catholic Bishops NULL
"We know tradition as a living social process constantly changing, constantly in need of criticism, but constant also as the continuing memory, value system and habit structure of a society." - Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal. " - William Penn
"When you are young and impecunious, society conditions you to exchange time for money, and this is quite as it should be. Very few people are hurt by having to work for a living. But as you become more affluent, it somehow is very, very difficult to reverse the process and begin trading money for time." - William H. Rehnquist
"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"Man is by nature good… Men are depraved and perverted by society." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Freedom and Liberty are not synonyms. Freedom is an essence; Liberty, an accident. Freedom is born with a man; Liberty may be conferred upon him… Freedom is the gift of God; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away from a man; but on whatsoever soul Freedom may light, the course of that soul is henceforth onward and upward." - James McCune Smith
"To indoctrinate the child with the prevailing world-view of the society and class in which he has been born, to enforce conformity in later life by the thunders of the priest and by the sword of the magistrate has been “the wisdom of our ancestor” at every stage in their progress from savagery to civilization." - Preserved Smith
"A competitive society is a society of envy." - Dorothee Söelle
"Trust is the fabric that binds us together, creating an orderly civilized society from chaos and anarchy… Trust must be carefully constructed, vigorously nurtured, and constantly reinforced." - Frank K. Sonnenberg
"Being considered or labeled mentally disordered – abnormal, crazy, mad, psychotic, sick, it matters not what variant is used – is the most profoundly discrediting classification that can be imposed on a person today. Mental illness casts the “patient” out of our social order just as surely as heresy cast the “witch” out of medieval society. That, indeed, is the very purpose of stigma terms." -
"In contemporary America [mental health] has come to mean conformity to the demands of society. According to the commonsense definition, mental health is the ability to play the game of social living, and to play it well. Conversely, mental illness is the refusal to play, or the inability to play well." -
"When enjoying life becomes the goal, it ceases producing happiness because the minute you get it you become dissatisfied. The booming entertainment industry is a symptom of a society dedicated toward tranquilizing its members with a lifetime of enjoyments." - Ezriel Tauber
"Men with power have an extraordinary capacity to convince themselves that what they want to do coincides with what society needs done for its [own] good." - Raymond Vernon
"The wealth of a society isn't measured at the top, but at the bottom" - Jim Webb, formally James Henry Webb, Jr.
"Some religious people abolish hatred because they’re religious. Others are fanatical, and they invoke hatred because they are religious. I believe that religion could be a marvelous way of humanizing society. Others believe that religion is here to serve fanatics, to punish, to chastise, to torture, to torment." - Elie Wiesel, fully Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
"The message from geneticists to intellectuals and policy-makers is this: Choose the society you want to promote, then prepare to live with its heritabilities. Never favor the reverse, of promoting social policies just to change heritabilities. For best results, cultivate individuals, not groups." -
"Men and women must be educated, in great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then fairly be inferred, that, until society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education." -
"Replacing religious institutions that are thousands of years old and hostile to reason with a reason-based belief system would transform society in a positive way more than any mere political change or economic-policy change ever could." - David B Anthony
"The established religious institutions are bastions of ignorance in a world where knowledge has become the most valuable commodity. Well-entrenched, these institutions hold back social progress, dividing people who otherwise have no reason to oppose one another, fanning the flames of militarism and nationalism. Most of all, however, they are promoting ignorance and falsehoods at the expense of truth. How can society advance under such erroneous belief systems?" - David B Anthony
"The act of openly challenging basic beliefs, according to Socrates, can save a society from its ignorance and self-destructive apathy. A society that’s too uncritically apathetic won’t stay vigorous and vital for long." - Judith Barad
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of the country." - Edward Bernays, fully Edward Louis Bernays
"Just as individual ethics can be understood only in relation to the society within which it is practiced, it is also true that individual ethical behavior is far likelier to flourish within a just society. It might be argued that to lead an ethical life one must work to build a just society." - Randy Cohen
"Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized society." - Joan G. Cooney, fully Joan Ganz Cooney
"Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society. The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil." - Albert Einstein
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives. " - Albert Einstein
"We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent." - Alexander Flexner
"[Plato's ideal society] guarantees to all people the right to an education that diagnoses and perfects their unique talents, plus a work role that conveys a sense of self-esteem, saving them from the neuroses of megalomania and the lust for power. It forbids privilege and sexism and all other criteria irrelevant to merit. It eliminates conflict of interest from those who hold office and gives the masses a potent checklist they can use to hold their rulers to account. Best of all, it eliminates all traces of "might makes right" and serves as a pattern laid up in heaven to rank actual societies in terms of what corrupts them. Society becomes more corrupt as the struggle for power becomes more brutal." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn
"Opinions about the perfect state of human society are only that; no road to ethical truth exists to moderate between them." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn
"The maltreatment of the natural world and its impoverishment leads to the impoverishment of the human soul. It is related to the outburst of violence in human society. To save the natural world today means to save what is human in humanity." - Raisa Gorbachev, fully Raisa Maximovna Gorbachova née Titarenko
"Many of our culture's most important achievements in the arts, science, and technology were made by people who had breakthrough insights in dreams, visions, intuitive flashbacks, and altered states of consciousness. And yet our society generally discounts such experiences, sometimes even treating them as grounds for a diagnosis of mental illness." - Richard Heinberg
"A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the framers of our Constitution." - Damon Keith, fully Damon Jerome Keith