Society Quotes
Do you hear the people sing?
ALL QUOTES POPULAR BROWSE BY AUTHOR BROWSE BY SOURCE BROWSE BY TOPIC BROWSE BY SUBJECT
Society Quotes
Societies, like Jennifer Lawrence on the red carpet, have a habit of rising and falling. Click on any society quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who said it, when they said it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to say it.
"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"Source: Jeremiah 29:10-14 | Speaker: The Prophet Jeremiah
"A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even YOU turned from me in disgust?"Source: Frankenstein | Author: Mary Shelley
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"And that's how you play "Get the Guests.""Source: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Speaker: George
"But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."Source: February 5, 2008 Speech | Speaker: Barack Obama
"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."Source: Henry Ford's Marketing Team | Speaker: Henry Ford
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."Source: "Loving Your Enemies" Sermon, Christmas Day 1957 | Speaker: Martin Luther King Jr.
"Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony."Source: Ebony and Ivory | Speaker: Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
"Everybody in the whole cell block was dancing to the jailhouse rock!"Source: "Jailhouse Rock" | Speaker: Elvis Presley
"Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal."Source: Fear and Trembling | Author: Søren Kierkegaard
"Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."Source: Critique of the Gotha Program | Author: Karl Marx
"Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone."Source: "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" | Speaker: Pink Floyd
"Hitler didn't snub me—it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."Source: A Republican Rally in Baltimore, Maryland | Speaker: Jesse Owens
"Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Author: Mark Twain
"I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I believe it is peace for our time."Source: Speech outside 10 Downing Street | Speaker: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
"I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."Source: Pride and Prejudice | Author: Jane Austen
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."Source: A Streetcar Named Desire | Author: Tennessee Williams
"I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom."Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Author: Frederick Douglass
"I said you wanna be startin' somethin', you gotta be startin' something."Source: "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" | Speaker: Michael Jackson
"I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys."Source: A Supermarket in California | Author: Allen Ginsberg
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good"Source: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Author: J.K. Rowling
"I started Early—Took my Dog / and visited the Sea"Source: I started Early—Took my Dog | Author: Emily Dickinson
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?Source: I'm Nobody! Who are you? | Author: Emily Dickinson
Are you — Nobody — too?"
"If I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work, an' no trouble."Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars."Source: War and Peace | Author: Leo Tolstoy
"In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."Source: Furman v. Georgia | Author: Thurgood Marshall
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known."Source: A Tale of Two Cities | Author: Charles Dickens
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."Source: Pride and Prejudice | Author: Jane Austen
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."Source: Utilitarianism | Author: John Stuart Mill
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."Source: A Tale of Two Cities | Author: Charles Dickens
"James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let's face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."Source: The Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."Source: The Social Contract | Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Speaker: Reverend Sykes
"My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind."Source: Declaration of Sentiments, The Liberator Magazine | Author: William Lloyd Garrison
"My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"My soul has grown deep like the rivers."Source: The Negro Speaks of Rivers | Author: Langston Hughes
"Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."Source: Game of Thrones | Speaker: Tyrion Lannister
"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent."Source: The annual convention of the California State Suffrage Association | Speaker: Susan B. Anthony
"No, Lennie, I ain't mad. I never been mad, and I ain' now. That's a thing I want ya to know."Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"Oh Philadelphia freedom, shine on me, I love you."Source: "Philadelphia Freedom" | Speaker: Elton John
"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."Source: Brave New World | Author: Aldous Huxley
"Our long national nightmare is over."Source: Inaugural Address, September 9, 1974 | Speaker: President Gerald Ford
"Religion is the opium of the people."Source: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Unfinished) | Author: Karl Marx
"She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom!"Source: The Scarlet Letter | Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."Source: Up from Slavery: An Autobiography | Author: Booker T. Washington
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant"Source: Tell all the truth but tell it slant— | Author: Emily Dickinson
"That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."Source: The Gettysburg Address | Author: Abraham Lincoln
"That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it."Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Author: Mark Twain
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."Source: March from Selma, 1965 | Speaker: Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness"Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."Source: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | Speaker: Spock
"The officer nodded, as if a question had been answered."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."Source: On the Road | Author: Jack Kerouac
"The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it."Source: The Second Treatise on Civil Government | Author: John Locke
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."Source: Letter to Col. William S. Smith, November 13, 1787 | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."Source: The Importance of Being Earnest | Author: Oscar Wilde
"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn't be fair if they tried."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"Things don't happen, they are made to happen."Source: University of North Dakota Address | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."Source: The Second Coming | Author: William Butler Yeats
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."Source: The San Francisco Chronicle | Author: Henry Ford
"Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."Source: The Hollow Men | Author: T.S. Eliot
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."Source: Pennsylvania Assembly | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."Source: The Soul of Man Under Socialism | Author: Oscar Wilde
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."Source: The Lorax | Author: Dr. Seuss
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"We accept the love we think we deserve."Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Author: Stephen Chbosky
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."Source: Lady Windermere's Fan | Author: Oscar Wilde
"We are not makers of history; we are made by history."Source: Strength to Love | Author: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grownups would do."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice."Source: "The Celebration of Negro History Week" in The Journal of Negro History | Author: Carter G. Woodson
"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"When in the course of human events…"Source: Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there."Source: The Grapes of Wrath | Speaker: Tom Joad
"You can feel it all over. You can feel it all over, people."Source: Sir Duke | Speaker: Stevie Wonder
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."Source: 1946 Letter | Author: Albert Einstein