Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The public power of all society is above every soul contained in the same society.

Not only is the self entwined in society; it owes society its existence in the most literal sense.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.

I still don't like authority exercised without reason. But they laugh at you at Cambridge if you say that sort of thing. For them, the law is a system of rules not that different from mathematics.

Society is held together by trust.

A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers on its members the benefits of socially accumulated knowledge.

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

Society values cooperation over independence, obedience over individuality, and niceness above all else.

Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice.

So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.

First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined.

I've never been one to tear the social fabric.

I've always been suspicious of collective truths.

Bandwagons roll through our lives. It's up to you whether you jump on them unquestioningly or jump on them to overturn them and subvert them.

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

Baseball regards us as sheep.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.

We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.

The hazing experience and then the subsequent participation in the group forces its members to maintain the status quo and traditions at all costs. It demands mindlessness and unquestioned loyalty, resulting in boring people who have little ability to think for themselves or have an opposing viewpoint from those who have the most social power.

The public use of a man's reason must be free at all times…. But I hear people clamor on all sides: Don't argue! The military officer says: Don't argue, drill! The tax collector: Don't argue, pay! The minister: Don't argue, believe!

The idea that liberal societies are bound together by philosophical beliefs seems to me to be ludicrous. Philosophy is not that important to politics.