Quotes about Society

There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding

A sufficient and sure method of civilization is in the influence of good women.

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world may at any time be superseded and decease.

The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.

A man must consider what rich realms he abdicates when he becomes a conformist

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.

I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate.

The truest test of civilization is not the census, size of cities, or crops; but the kind of man the country turns out.

Transcendentalists have been accused of being rebels and rule-breakers. But if they disregard society's customs and laws, it's because they're listening to conscience and obeying the Law Maker within. There are situations where virtue asks us to break the rules.