Clay Shirky Quotes

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

Institutions are what allow us to have continuity in civilizations.

On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.

In the stable periods of history, meaning was supplied in the context of a coherent community and traditionally prescribed patterns of culture. Today we cannot count on any such inheritance.

The State is the nation socially organized.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.

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

Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.

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.

I'm more into human nature than politics. But they're intertwined. Obviously, I live in civilization, so politics are part of my life.

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

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.

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

Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.

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.

Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.

If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.

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.

You can't have a limited government if the family breaks down.

Society cannot exist without law. Law is the bond of society: that which makes it, that which preserves it and keeps it together. It is, in fact, the essence of civil society.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values.

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

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.