Society Quotes – Thoughtful Reflections on Human Interaction

"The press needs to have the freedom to say all so that certain people don’t have the freedom to do all."

Stewart Alsop

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Henry Louis Mencken

"People can play many roles and be subjectively convinced that each one is their true self. In reality, however, they play each role based on their own ideas of what those around them expect of them. And for many people—if not most—the true personality is completely overshadowed by the false one."

Erich Fromm

"It is better to be slapped by the truth than kissed by a lie."

Unknown

"The Pavlovian strategy in public relations has people conditioned more and more to ask themselves, "What do other people think?" As a result, a common delusion is created: people are incited to think what other people think, and thus public opinion may mushroom out into a mass prejudice. Expressed in psychoanalytic terms, through daily propagandistic noise backed up by forceful verbal cues, people can more and more be forced to identify with the powerful noisemaker. Big brother's voice resounds in all the little brothers."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"Today there's more fellowship among snakes than among mankind. Wild beasts spare those with similar markings."

Juvenal

"The easiest way to grab people’s attention is to make them frightened. This is how we are built really as animals. So if you want to distract the public from issues like government corruption or like deteriorating health care system or deteriorating education system, the best thing is to find an external enemy that threatens the survival of the nation and immediately that gets all the attention and people forget about the other things"

Yuval Noah Harari

"In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable."

Walter Lippmann

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."

Henry Louis Mencken

"For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular."

H. L. Mencken

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

Isaac Asimov

"Social media has degenerated into a deafening cacophony of groups signaling and repeating their shared myths."

Naval Ravikant

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

Vladimir Lenin

"Luxury destroys more efficiently than war."

Juvenal

"When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that’s why I can’t eat it. Simple as that."

Sir James Paul McCartney

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."

George Bernard Shaw