Herbert Read Quotes

One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine.

Societies depend on agreed rules.

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.

Normal social behavior requires that we be able to recognize identities in spite of change. Unless we can do so, there can be no human society as we know it.

We are what make up society.

My students often ask me, 'What is sociology?' And I tell them, 'It's the study of the way in which human beings are shaped by things that they don't see.'

The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.

Cognitive neuroscience, and social theorists from Weber to Bourdieu, have recognized that humans act, most of the time, habitually, not reflectively. Both at intrastate and inter-states levels, habits play critical roles in mitigating uncertainty, providing a sense of order, and entrench patterns of cooperation or enmity.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

Man has been adjudged a social animal.

It is a community of purpose that constitutes society.

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.

Society is one word, but many things.

the more our societies grow, the more important trust becomes and the harder it is to build. And that is a paradox of modern societies.

Society becomes how we behave.

I was obsessed with learning about social behaviors. I remember explaining to my mom that kids on my soccer team were fighting because of dyads and triads.

Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.

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.

A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

My work has social implications, it functions in a social arena.

That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy.

Property with peace and order; with civil and social manners ... are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit ... not likely to continue long.

Science of Society

One of the damnable unhappy conditions of life is sometimes Government has to make people be civil.