4,426 Quotes About Society

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

While humans have the propensity to develop a suite of prosocial behaviors, they are also capable of developing antisocial behavior, engaging in substance abuse, experiencing depression, and bearing children at an early age...Young people who develop aggressive behavior tendencies are likely to develop problems with tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use; to fail academically; to have children at an early age;and to raise children likely to have the same problems.

The chain is only as strong as its weakestlink, for if that fails the chain fails and the object that it has been holding up falls to the ground.

Academic failure contributes to poverty and poor health and undermines workforce productivity in ways that harm the entire society.

We have watched men and women expend the whole of their lives brilliantly form-fitting the Word of God to the ever-changing contour of the culture. Yet, true brilliance is found in recognizing that the ‘ever-changing’ contour of the culture is a result of the fact that we’ve refused to form-fit it to the ‘never-changing’ contour of scripture. And anything less than that is brilliance brilliantly faked.

Voluntary association is the tool society uses when its members are free to behave as they will. Government is the tool society uses to force its members to behave in certain ways. Cloaking the tool in the civility of democracy does not change its essence, as a democratically elected government only appears non-threatening to the majority. This is not to say that government is not a necessary and useful tool. It is to say that it is an extremely dangerous one.

Making it harder to obtain guns makes it harder for criminals to commit crimes. But making it harder to obtain guns also makes it harder for victims to defend themselves, and makes it easier for criminals to commit crimes.

When government limits its force only to preventing people from imposing harm on each other, people have the maximum ability to cooperate. It is from cooperation, not coercion, that human society flourishes.

The faith that people unthinkingly place in government and its ability to accomplish any number of important goals is at the same time a faith in the people who work in government, so-called public servants. If we contend that only government can accomplish certain things, then we are, by definition, asserting that the people who work in government are somehow more knowledgeable, more capable, more well-intentioned, or more motivated than their counterparts outside of government.