John Buchan Quotes

In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.

A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.

Nothing in our evolutionary history specifically prepared us to live in large societies. Almost everything about the way culture works does.

Societies depend on agreed rules.

But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.

Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence - one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.

Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mold the social life of mankind.

Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side.

A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.

The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.

Sociology should... be thought of as a science of action-of the ultimate common value element in its relations to the other elements of action.

Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature's power.

There is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.

Human society is the embodiment of changeless laws which the whimsicalities and circumstances of men and women involve and overwrap. The realm of literature is the realm of these accidental manners and humours--a spacious realm; and the true literary artist concerns himself mainly with them.

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences.

A leader is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals and a people reverts to a mob.

Many social practices essential to the welfare of the species involve the control of one person by another, and no one can suppress them who has any concern for human achievements

One... gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed.

Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.

The great and good ends proposed by the Illuminati, as the ultimate objects of their union, are the overthrow of religion, government, and human society civil and domestic.

A complex society is not necessarily more advanced than a simple one; it has just adapted to conditions in a more complicated way.