Quote list
Portal:Society/Selected quote/1
“
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large number of people from coughing.
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Ralph Richardson
Portal:Society/Selected quote/2
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Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
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Steve Martin
Portal:Society/Selected quote/3
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I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things -- because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.
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Woody Allen
Portal:Society/Selected quote/4
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There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.
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Hubert Humphrey
Portal:Society/Selected quote/5
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He who throws a bomb and kills a pedestrian, declares that as a victim of society he has rebelled against society. But could not the poor victim object: "Am I society?"
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Errico Malatesta
Portal:Society/Selected quote/6
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Some people commit a crime for no other reason than to see their name in print.
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Gustave Flaubert
Portal:Society/Selected quote/7
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Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life.
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Marcus Garvey
Portal:Society/Selected quote/8
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Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. ... Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
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Barry Goldwater
Portal:Society/Selected quote/9
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Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.
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James A. Garfield
Portal:Society/Selected quote/10
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The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.
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Pearl S. Buck
Portal:Society/Selected quote/11
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I think now films are reflecting the exact same thing that goes on in society today which is for the first time since then people are sitting at restaurants and having conversations about their concerns or their beliefs in the political system and I think that films reflect that. We're not good first responder films. We have to write a script after things happen. We have to direct it. We have to shoot it. We have to edit it and release it. So, in general we tend to be, you know, is there a liberal bend, sure. I don't make any apologies about that. I'm a liberal, you know. I believe in it.
”
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George Clooney, 2006
Portal:Society/Selected quote/12
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It's what I've chosen to do ... I like to see people jump out of their seats. In that sense, I'm as much of a whore as the vaudevillians were, and proud of it.
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Steven Spielberg
Portal:Society/Selected quote/13
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It [the movie art form] combines so many other art forms, as do theater and opera, but the essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images, images of people during emotional moments, or just images in a general sense, but put together in a kind of alchemy. A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.
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Francis Ford Coppola
Portal:Society/Selected quote/14
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The author's most important answer is the work itself, and in my work people have found the few things I tried to say. Despite that, the author generally is the least suited to talk about his work.
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Federico Fellini
Portal:Society/Selected quote/15
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By 1996, there was enough material on the Internet to show that this thing was the cornerstone for how people are going to be publishing. It is the people's library.
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Brewster Kahle, 2004
Portal:Society/Selected quote/16
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I mean, you go to the Internet and you can see all these conversations and arguments that our fans have about our music and that's wonderful to know, that people would take the time to be that involved.
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Alex Lifeson, 1998
Portal:Society/Selected quote/17
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If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit.
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Lawrence Lessig, 2001
Portal:Society/Selected quote/18
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Cyberspace may give freedom of speech more muscle than the First Amendment does. It may already have become literally impossible for a government to shut people up.
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Mike Godwin, 1994
Portal:Society/Selected quote/19
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A journalist is basically a chronicler, not an interpreter of events. Where else in society do you have the license to eavesdrop on so many different conversations as you have in journalism? Where else can you delve into the life of our times? I consider myself a fortunate man to have a forum for my curiosity.
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Bill Moyers
Portal:Society/Selected quote/20
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Today's serious nonfiction writer is important to society because from a solid background of social sciences, combined with the journalistic skills of a reporter, one moves beyond the reporter function to the front edge of our emerging society.
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Betty Friedan, May 1978, 30th Anniversary Journal,
American Society of Journalists and Authors
Portal:Society/Selected quote/21
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A person who cannot live in society, or does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is either a beast or a god.
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Aristotle, Politics
Portal:Society/Selected quote/22
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What is not good for the beehive, cannot be good for the bees.
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Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Portal:Society/Selected quote/23
Portal:Society/Selected quote/24
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The history of society is the history of the inventive labors that man alter man, alter his desires, habits, outlook, relationships both to other men and to physical nature, with which man is in perpetual physical and technological metabolism.
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Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx (1978)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/25
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The only living socities are those which are animated by inequality and injustice.
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Paul Claudel, Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher
Portal:Society/Selected quote/26
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The virtues of society are the vices of the saint.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series (1841)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/27
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In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.
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John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/28
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I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
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William Hazlitt, Table-Talk (1822)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/29
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A society made up of the individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic.
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H. L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/30
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When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan.
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John Stuart Mill, Dissertations and Discussions (1859)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/31
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No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
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Adam Smith,
Wealth of Nations (1776)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/32
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As long as men are men, a poor society cannot be too poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too rich to have need to seek it.
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R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (1921)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/33
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Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
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Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Portal:Society/Selected quote/34
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Society became my glittering bride, / And airy hopes my children.
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William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), Book III.
Portal:Society/Selected quote/35
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Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.
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Euripides, Phœmissæ. Frag. 809.
Portal:Society/Selected quote/36
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For every social wrong there must be a remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong.
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Henry George, Social Problems, Chapter IX.
Portal:Society/Selected quote/37
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The noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
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Edward Gibbon, Memoirs, Volume I, p. 116.
Portal:Society/Selected quote/38
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I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
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Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Chapter XVI.
Portal:Society/Selected quote/39
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Society therefore is as ancient as the world.
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Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif ("A Philosophical Dictionary") (1764), Policy.
Portal:Society/Selected quote/40
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At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.
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Nathaniel Parker Willis, Necessity for a Promenade Drive