Oscar Wilde Quotes

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.

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

It is a community of purpose that constitutes society.

I don't really believe in the idea of the individual.

The Public is merely a multiplied 'me.'

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

Communities don't think, don't believe, don't want, don't have needs, don't have interests and don't make decisions. Only individuals have minds that generate desires and needs - and only individuals can make choices and decisions.

Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply personal for every single Christian; nobody gets lost in the kingdom of God. But you can't play that off against the corporate dimension.

Science of Society

As states we act, in general, and in most cases, exactly like the individuals of whom our society is composed.

For traditional societies … the collective, the group, is more important than the individual, and empowering the individual is equated with dividing the society.

Society is one word, but many things.

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.

Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms.

Man is not made for society, but society is made for man.

Americans are so individualistic, they do not realize their individualism is a communally derived value.

Just as the earth is a planet in its own right, so each of us is an individual in our own sphere of habitation. We are individuals, but we live in families and communities where order provides a system of harmony that hinges on obedience to principles.

Coming out of university, one of my obsessions was that in the novels I was reading, they seemed to be portraying a world that had a social fabric. People knew each other in 'War and Peace.' They went to all the same balls. These were societies with tightly wound, woven, social textures.

There is such a thing as society. It's just not the same thing as the state.

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

At one and the same time, therefore, society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever

Natural man did not precede society, nor is he outside it.

Society is our extended mind and body.

Society becomes how we behave.