Quotes about Society

The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

He is not a true man of the world who knows only the present fashions of it.

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

I have no doubt that historians will conclude that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

Disgust at collective killing is of very recent date and should not be over-estimated. Today everyone takes part in public executions through the newspapers. Like everything else, however, it is more comfortable than it was. We sit peacefully at home and, out of a hundred details, can choose those to linger over which offer a special thrill. We only applaud when everything is over and there is no feeling of guilty connivance to spoil our pleasure.

The touch to which one resigns oneself because all resistance appears hopeless — and particularly so as regards the future — has, in our society, become the arrest . The feel of the hand of authority on his shoulder is usually enough to make a man give himself up without having to be actually seized. He cowers and goes quietly.

Spesso si parla dell'istinto di distruzione della massa, è la sua caratteristica più vistosa, quella che, innegabilmente, si ritrova ovunque nei paesi e nelle civiltà più diverse.

For today, thanks to recently discovered documents, the evidence shows that in the early days of their accession to power, the Nazis in Germany set out to build a society in which there simply would be no room for Jews. Toward the end of their reign, their goal changed: they decided to leave behind a world in ruins in which Jews would seem never to have existed.

Current among men, Like coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.