Quotes about Society
If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
You can tell the story of the rise of Christianity without any reference to divine assistance. It was a movement like any other, a man-made cult, a cultural contagion passed from mind to mind, a natural example of cultural evolution.
It is much easier to do business with the owner of the business than some employee who is likely to lose his job next year; likewise it is easier to trust the word of an autocrat than a fragile elected official.
Individuals don`t need to know where they are going; markets do. Leave people alone under a good structure and they will take care of things.
The rules of life aren`t always clear. Some rules are unwritten. And just when we think we have a handle on the rules something comes along. Things ain`t never gonna be the same.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Under a welfare state there is always the danger that adults as well as children will believe in Santa Claus.
We don`t get harmony when everybody sings the same note. Only notes that are different can harmonize. The same is true with people.
I`m fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us...
It is not long in historical terms since Christian priests were burning people at the stake if they did not believe that wine turns to blood when a priest prays over it, and that the earth sits immovably at the universe`s centre, or [...] since they were whipping people and slitting their noses and ears for having sex outside marriage [...]. To this day adulterers are stoned to death in certain Muslim countries; if the priests were still on top in the once-Christian world, who can say it would be different?
The great moral questions of the present age are those about human rights, war, poverty, the vast disparities between rich and poor, the fact that somewhere in the third world a child dies every two and a half seconds because of starvation or remediable disease. The churches` obsessions over pre-marital sex and whether divorced couples can remarry in church appears contemptible in the light of this mountain of human suffering and need. By distracting attention from what really counts, and focusing it on the minor and anyway futile attempt to get people to conduct their personal lives only in ways the church permits, harm is done to the cause of good in the world.