social equilibrium Quotes

Freedom is a personal experience; a free society is an association of free individuals, nothing else. Freedom consists simply in the absence of external restraints on thought and behavior. Yet, because the individual, in his efforts to improve upon his circumstances, not infrequently transgresses the equal freedom of his fellow man, restraint becomes a necessary condition of social living; it is the means of maintaining an equilibrium, or justice.

A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.

In the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.

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.

I remain hopeful that science, innovation and kindness will come to the fore as things become more and more tense in parts of the world. I think what you are seeing in the world right now is kind of a leveling or an attempt to level the playing field.

I tend to believe that audiences are relatively well-balanced people.

It is vain to expect a well-balanced government without a well-balanced society.

A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium.

The sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanity's.

The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.

Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.

Each and every civilization in the world is in complete concordance with its people and their condition of living. If a civilization loses this equilibrium it will be lost itself. The inharmonious civilizations die because of their lack of harmony and those who survive are in complete harmony with the changing conditions. The best way of coping with these ever-increasing changes is to come together with the other civilizations.

When societies are out of harmony, problems develop within the society - collective problems. Their purpose is to push the whole society toward harmony.

The bad news is that the movement toward the partnership side of the social scale (and it is always a matter of degree, as no society is a pure partnership or domination system) has been fiercely resisted and countered by periodic regressions. So domination systems have rebuilt themselves in different forms - be they secular or religious, eastern or western, leftist or rightist.

In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes

Entrenched customs represent a social equilibrium, and moving away from that equilibrium is difficult to do on your own.