Societal Quotes

Belief transcends ritual, structure and societal expectation.
It is an enlivening, intensely personal
core to our being. Our way of being.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

In many ways, it is easier to be a good giver than a good receiver.
The giver chooses the gift and the timing.
More important, societal and religious traditions
tend to elevate the status of giver and lower the status of receiver.
When the Bible (Acts 20:32-35) speaks of it being
more blessed to give than to receive,
I believe that a better translation might be
"take" rather than "receive," as the context
of that passage is "coveting."
Certainly there is nothing blessed about coveting,
stealing, begging, or demanding,
however the skill of graciously receiving a freely offered gift
is another matter entirely.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If self-validation were our
most significant societal measure -
we would give trophies to ourselves.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I had three chairs in my house;
one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
- Henry David Thoreau

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Truth is certainly a branch of morality
and a very important one to society.
- Thomas Jefferson

Society censors our actions,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The opposite of courage in our society
is not cowardice, it is conformity.
- Rollo May

People who work together will win,
whether it be against complex football defenses,
or the problems of modern society.
- Vince Lombardi

Society is a masked ball,
where every one hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The heart is always right -
if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart -
because mind is a creation of the society.
It has been educated.
You have been given it by the society, not by existence.
The heart is unpolluted.
- Osho

In Iroquois society, leaders are encouraged to
remember seven generations in the past and
consider seven generations in the future
when making decisions that affect the people.
- Wilma Mankiller

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.
- Albert Einstein

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul
than the way in which it treats its children.
- Nelson Mandela

In every society some men are born to rule,
and some to advise.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget
all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
- Henry David Thoreau

All that is valuable in human society
depends upon the opportunity for development
accorded the individual.
- Albert Einstein

Society is always taken by surprise
at any new example of common sense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Clothes make the man.
Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- Mark Twain

Because we believe that our ethnic group,
our society, our political party, our God,
is better than your God, we kill each other.
- Neale Donald Walsch

To educate a person in mind and not in morals
is to educate a menace to society.
- Theodore Roosevelt

I claim that human mind or human society
is not divided into watertight compartments
called social, political and religious.
All act and react upon one another.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role,
is to try and express what we all feel.
Not to tell people how to feel.
Not as a preacher, not as a leader,
but as a reflection of us all.
- John Lennon

It seems that we have it backward in our society.
We tend to look up to people
who are under a great deal of stress,
who can handle loads of stress,
and those who are under a great deal of pressure.
- Richard Carlson

The value of a dollar is social,
as it is created by society.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must not inflict life on children who will be resented;
we must not inflict unwanted children on society.
- Anne Lamott

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture,
society must set the artist free
to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
- John F. Kennedy

Sucking the marrow out of life
doesn't mean choking on the bone.
- Robin Williams as John Keating
in the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society

As in geology, so in social institutions,
we may discover the causes of all past changes
in the present invariable order of society.
- Henry David Thoreau

Measures must always, in a progressive society,
be held superior to men, who are after all,
imperfect instruments, working for their fulfillment.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
- Margaret Mead

One of the greatest casualties
of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society...
shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor,
it cannot save the few who are rich.
- John F. Kennedy

Sports are a microcosm of society.
- Billie Jean King (tennis player)

It is incontestable and deplorable
that Negroes have committed crimes;
but they are derivative crimes.
They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

My decision to register women confirms what is already obvious
throughout our society -
that women are now providing
all types of skills in every profession.
The military should be no exception.
- Jimmy Carter

Liberty is to the collective body,
what health is to every individual body.
Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man;
without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
- Thomas Jefferson

The basic thing nobody asks is
why do people take drugs of any sort?
Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live?
I mean, is there something wrong with society
that's making us so pressurized,
that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?
- John Lennon

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.
I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends
and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that.
That's what's insane about it.
- John Lennon

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers
of the society but the people themselves;
and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise
their control with a wholesome discretion,
the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
- Thomas Jefferson

The very word "secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society;
and we are as a people inherently and historically
opposed to secret societies,
to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
- John F. Kennedy

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes
in every waking moment of their lives
to remind them that the lie of their inferiority
is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely
as if they had never happened before.
- Willa Cather

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet

I never accepted the idea
that I had to be guided by
some pattern or blueprint.
- Little Richard

I leave no trace of wings in the air,
but I am glad I have had my flight.
- Rabindranath Tagore

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

I have found that hollow,
which even I had relied on for solid.
- Henry David Thoreau

The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,
I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
- Abraham Lincoln

What work I have done I have done because it has been play.
If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.
- Mark Twain

We thought that we had the answers,
it was the questions we had wrong.
- Bono

We occasionally stumble over the truth
but most of us pick ourselves up and
hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

As for accomplishments,
I just did what I had to do as things came along.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had
because they didn't have the talent
or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?
- Nelson Mandela

I have had dreams, and I have had nightmares.
I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.
- Jonas Salk

I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- Abraham Lincoln

It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.
- Leonardo da Vinci

When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill

That's what learning is, after all;
not whether we lose the game,
but how we lose and h
ow we've changed because of it
and what we take away from it
that we never had before,
to apply to other games.
Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
- Richard Bach

No stream rises higher than its source.
Whatever man might build, could never
express or reflect more than he was.
He could record neither more nor less
than he had learned of life.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

You can learn how to let go of the past.
Whether you have experienced a break up
with someone you cared for deeply,
whether death has taken a loved one,
whether you have had a feud with a friend or family member,
whether you have lost a job.
Move on and let go.
Life can be joyful and rewarding again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

My father always used to say that when you die,
if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.
- Lee Iacocca

I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I had no sense of humor,
I would long ago have committed suicide.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart,
it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him,
for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low,
could still be saved; the bitterest enemy
and also he who was your friend could again be your friend;
love that has grown cold can kindle
- Soren Kierkegaard

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world,
'til you gave it back to me.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

If i had known... i would have lingered
over my coffee a little longer.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie