Societal Resilience Quotes

We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.

We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is - on the brink of catastrophe - torn by polarizing hate, and how it's a shame that we can't work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!

The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm's length.

Society proceeds like the ocean. After a disaster, it resume its wonted level and rhythms; its devouring interests efface all traces of damage.

There’s a carrying capacity in any society for how much change it can incorporate at any one time.

I fear that, as conditions worsen, many will react to the failures of too much government by calling for even more government. Then there will be more and more lifeboats launched because fewer and fewer citizens know how to swim. Unlike some pendulums, political pendulums to not swing back automatically; they must be pushed. History is full of instances when people have waited in vain for pendulums to swing back.

I want people to hear what I think about these foundational American values of personal responsibility, resilience, family and faith, there are things that people can learn from somebody who leads a state like Ohio which is, frankly, a microcosm of the country.

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored.

And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.

I’ve seen the nations rise and fall. I’ve heard their stories, heard them all, but love’s the only engine of survival.

A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.

It is nice in France they adapt themselves to everything slowly they change completely but all the time they know that they are as they were.

A society or a nation constructed nonviolently must be able to withstand attack upon its structure from without or within.

One wonders sometimes, looking at the world, how it's dealing with itself. There are days when you wake up and you feel very optimistic and there are days when you feel pessimistic.

If there is a pattern, it will come back - maybe in Russia more than anywhere else, because it has collapsed so many times. Maybe less so here in the States, because here the society is so young.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.

Here's the positive scenario: that something has been going wrong in American society. You see it in wage growth, opioid abuse, many other social indicators, as you know. Sometimes it's better to get the bad reaction to that over with quickly while your civil society still is strong and you can react and respond and protest, and you know, four or eight years from now, make another decision, and maybe it's better to have that happen in 2017 than 20 years later when some of our problems are worse and our national mood is worse.

We have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror.

Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.

The preservation of freedom, is not the task of soldiers alone. The whole nation has to be strong.

No matter how strong and dedicated a leader may be, he must find root and strength amongst the people. He alone cannot save a nation. He may guide, he may set the tone, he may dedicate himself and risk his life, but only the people may save themselves.

Preventing conflict means going back to basics - strengthening institutions and building resilient societies.