societal balance Quotes

It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one-half of mankind brave and one-half cowards, the brave would always be beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would leave a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on very well.

Vice cannot be removed completely, nor is it right that it should be removed.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we're in a battle between tyranny and freedom - it's a series of pendulum swings.

We will never know peace in the world without balance. And we will never know balance without justice for all. Yet, justice exists only where there is fairness and equality -- when every man and country is treated and viewed equally. My father believes that there is no such thing as justice because all his life he has witnessed the tipping of the scales. We must change this widespread mentality by making equality a reality, not just something we read and hear about on the TV and in literature.

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

If there'd been a better-balanced society, where there were other ways of making a decent living, I think it might have been different. That's not the way this setup work.

Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.

We need to make sure that we're not in a society that is unbalanced and unfair and where the richest Americans are taking advantage of everybody else.

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 left and right have been as bad as each other. The left has allowed its distrust of markets and endless faith in government to obscure the importance of civil society. The right has been so focused on replacing the state with markets that it has forgotten how to cultivate a trusting society

But love is just as important as politics to me. They both exist in the world, you know? And if you dont reflect the entire world around you, then youre leaving something out.

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

I have said this on many a previous occasion: that had the mix in Singapore been different, had it been 75% Indians, 15% Malays and the rest Chinese, it would not have worked. Because they believe in the politics of contention, of opposition. But because the culture was such that the populace sought a practical way out of their difficulties, therefore it has worked.

The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land.

It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society.

Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom.

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young. I get very concerned when people talk about cutting education budgets.

The problem with the old ideology was that it suppressed the individual by starting with society. But it is from a sense of individual duty that we connect the greater good and the interests of the community

If women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed. If women can supply no counterbalance to the blindness of male drive the aggressive society will run to its lunatic extremes at ever-escalating speed. Who will safeguard the despised animal faculties of compassion, empathy, innocence and sensuality?

Unless you are willing to compromise, society cannot live together.