Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.
Henry George

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.
Jurgen Habermas

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.
Daniel Goleman

Societies depend on agreed rules.
John M. Smith

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.
Marshall McLuhan

Societies need rules that make no sense for individuals. For example, it makes no difference whether a single car drives on the left or on the right. But it makes all the difference when there are many cars!
Marvin Minsky

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.
Susan Sontag

Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.
Ronald Wright

Terrorism takes us back to ages we thought were long gone if we allow it a free hand to corrupt democratic societies and destroy the basic rules of international life.
Jacques Chirac

The broadest pattern of history - namely, the differences between human societies on different continents - seems to me to be attributable to differences among continental environments, and not to biological differences among peoples themselves.
Jared Diamond

The condition of women in Islamic societies as a whole is also far from desirable. However, we should acknowledge that there are differences. In certain countries, the conditions are much better and in others much worse.
Shirin Ebadi

The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.
Thomas Malthus

The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full, but also when people's basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies.
Gro Harlem Brundtland

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.
Benjamin Disraeli

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.
Christian Nestell Bovee

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
Karl Marx

The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.
Aung San Suu Kyi

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.
Jean Cocteau

The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.
Abba Eban