societal interactions Quotes

Sharpen your interest in two major subjects: life and people. You will only gather information from a source if you are interested in it.

Old friend, there are people—young and old—that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by and old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore hell out of me.

Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.

Man, the molecule of society, is the subject of social science.

While a lot of my day, like most people's, is spent thinking about me, I can see how it's a universal thing: the competition, the clashes of personality that fuel the world and fill the world, are the exact same ones that take place just between two people. I just think politics is a form, en masse, of human relations.

A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune.

Within even the most social group there are many relations that are not as yet social.

I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.

My wish is to construct a system of sociology on the model of celestial mechanics, physics, and chemistry.