Fabric Of Society Quotes & Sayings

America is the story of everyday people who did extraordinary things. A story woven deep into the fabric of our society. — Marco Rubio

If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery. — John Dewey

Modern society, the political body, the legal and judiciary system, the state of governance, capitalism and the very fabric of the society itself, including our religions and so-called morals and values, are institutions steeped in traditions of absolute and total violence. — Bryant McGill

The American people do not want people thumbing their nose at the law. It undercuts the very fabric of our society and the system of civil justice and of criminal justice as well. — Ernest Istook

There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. — Warren E. Burger

Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society. — Henry Ward Beecher

The big lie perpetrated on Western society is the idea of women's inferiority, a lie so deeply ingrained in our social behaviour that merely to recognize it is to risk unravelling the entire fabric of civilization. — Molly Haskell

In less than a decade, social media is one of those things that has become part of the fabric of society. It is also something about which everyone has an opinion. At some point in a dinner party, someone tends to malign social media for being full of updates about lunch or photos of pets. Life is full of froth. It is the mundane that makes us human. The seemingly inconsequential tidbits we share help us forge social bonds and bring us closer together. — Alfred Hermida

Pornography is anything that depicts lewdness in such a way as to create impure thoughts and lusts. However, the sewers continue to flow, destroying the moral fabric of our society. — Billy Graham

The whole fabric of society will go to wrack if we really lay hands of reform on our rotten institutions. From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud, all of us know it, laborers and capitalists alike, and all of us are consenting parties to it. — Henry Adams

Health is being in harmony with the world view. Health is an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals and plants and minerals and stars. It is knowing death and life and seeing no difference. It is blending and melding, seeking solitude and seeking companionship to understand one's many levels. Unlike the more "modern" notions, in shamanic society health is not the absence of feeling; no more so is it the absence of pain. Health is seeking out all of the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one's singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe. — Jeanne Achterberg

It neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record - and its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the 'Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.' Its more conventional name, of course, is dehumanization. — Ashley Montagu

The real fabric of American society is not all those flags you see on people's cars ... it's in the Bill of Rights and in our constitutional form of government. — John Adams

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in. — Ken Kesey

For me, adventures are a vehicle for travelling deep into the fabric of society, coming to know the environmental conditions that shape people's lives and viewing the present in the context of history. — Tim Cope

Stories matter. They shape our lives, expectations, and dreams. They are the warp and weave of our human existence, binding us into a fabric far stronger than any individual element — Bascomb James

The playwright Henrik Ibsen used the phrase "pillars of society" to refer to those people in positions of power who profit from the mendacity of the society they live in. I hope that those people who have recognized their own story and freed themselves from the lies of conventional morality will be the pillars of a future society built on conscious awareness. Without the awareness of what happened to us at the outset of our lives, the entire fabric of our culture seems to me to be nothing other than a farce. — Alice Miller

There are two competing trends in the world today: one is to create a planetary civilization that is tolerant, scientific, and prosperous, but the other glorifies anarchy and ignorance that could rip the fabric of our society. — Michio Kaku

I hate the endless admonishments of a nanny state that lives in fear of its lawyers. While colonies of dim-witted traffic wardens swarm about looking for minor parking infringements, nobody seems to notice that our very social fabric is falling apart. — Christopher Fowler

Europe, he says, is frightened that an influx of foreigners will erode European values. But what values will there to be uphold if we abandon our duty to protect those less fortunate than ourselves? Wat incentive do we give to refugees to maintain the fabric of our society if that fabric is so ragged in the first place? "If Europe is not able to show a better way of life to them, then they will think that their morality is better than ours."

"They need to face some higher standards of morality, " he says. "If not, they will set their own."

[Quoting Serbian priest Tibor Varga] — Patrick Kingsley

Bottom line? The fabric of the race's society is going to unravel, and if you think that's going to help in the war, you've got your head so far up your ass you're using your colon as a mouthpiece. — J.R. Ward

Edmund Burke in his critique of the French Revolution. Any society, he wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, which destroys the fabric of its state, must soon be "disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality". — Tony Judt

Big efforts should be made to integrate Israel's Arab citizens into the fabric of the Israeli society and the Israeli economy. That's really the key to any further progress to do with the Palestinians beyond Israel's borders. — Moshe Arens

Violence is a crime against humanity, for it destroys the very fabric of society. — Pope John Paul II

he was at heart profoundly conservative and would not keep the works of Darwin or Lyell in his study for fear they carried a contagion that might spread throughout his healthier books. He was not an especially devout man, but felt that a common faith overlooked by a benevolent God was what kept the fabric of society from tearing like a worn sheet. The idea that after all there was no essential nobility in mankind, and that his own species was not a chosen people touched by the divine, troubled him in the hours before dawn; and as with most troubling matters he elected to ignore it, until it went away. — Sarah Perry

Polar fleece is a plush, spongy, totally artificial material that weighs nothing and conveys no quality of warmth or coolness; in fact, you can wear it in the most bitter weather or in the hottest heat. Polar fleece looks neither flimsy and light nor hearty and warm. It has no historical, cultural, or physical association with a place, a season, a society, or any living thing. It is the first existential fabric - eminentaly useful, meaningless, dissociated and weird. — Mary Ruefle

I remember, back in England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off to a meeting on his evening out and come back and denounced me in front of a crowd of chappies I was giving a bit of supper to as a useless blot on the fabric of Society. — P.G. Wodehouse

I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society. — Paul Haggis

No, the events which I am about to describe were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society and, particularly at a time of war, this is something I cannot risk. — Anthony Horowitz

The norm which the society at large has set today categorically is in the form of preventive measures to be clasped within the purview of its social fabric. The legislators of great economies on the other hand have retrospectively identified the offense, researched, debated and have successfully handed down several yards of legislation with ingrained penalties and punishment for the trespassers of what they think as appropriate, bearing in mind basic human rights of the offenders.
And the sword of Damocles continues to haunt tiny sprouts of the society, ripping their souls and plunging them to misery, despair or death, to which several national and international judicial precedents bear witness. — Henrietta Newton Martin Legal Consultant

I am angry about the mammoth, out-of-control social welfare entitlement programs from Washington, D.C., that were supposed to solve our problems. The obvious truth is these impractical, politically motivated programs have irreparably damaged the fabric of our black society and community. — Allen West

The fabric of our society needs mending. — Michael P. Michaud

It's worth taking the comparison with America a bit further. In the United States, slavery was a 300-year-old institution. After abolition, it took another century of struggle for equality to secure full civil rights for black Americans. A half-century later, the struggle is hardly over. In India, caste has, over several millennia, woven itself into the fabric of society, infused itself as a climate of mind. Was it ever conceivable that one remarkable individual, a bracing, brave Constitution, and a few dozen free elections would blow it away? — Sunil Khilnani

Capitalism rules worldwide, and a society whose economic fabric depends on constant growth requires that its citizens have ever-expanding needs and wants ... In the West, it will take one with soul force equal to Gandhi's to change the prevailing dogma of ever increasing GNP. We may be forced to change our profligate ways some day, when the soil is depleted, the aquifers drained, the icecaps melted, and all the oil wells pumped dry. But the crisis will wait another fifty years or so; we'll leave those problems to a generation yet unborn. — Philip Yancey

The belief-transmission network of which we are a part cannot operate without a continuously replenished supply of people to do the transmitting, thus the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes a part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it. — Daniel M. Gilbert

Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give. — Thomas Guthrie

The lowest depth that a human being can reach is to perform or to receive torture. The goal of the torturer is to inflict horrific pain and dehumanize another being. The act not only destroys both parties' souls - the victim's and the perpetrator's - but also the very fabric of a society. By subjecting men or women to enforced violence, sexual violation, or worse, you transform them into something subhuman. How does someone return to the human race after having been so brutalized? — Janine Di Giovanni

You told me to believe in myself, and so I made you a garden of thimbles. A promise, Free, that we won't compromise. That our marriage won't be almost what you wished for, that your dreams will not be tempered. That I will not be the one who holds you back, but the man who carries thimbles to water your garden when your arms tire."

"That's where we'll start," he said. "When the fabric of society fails to unravel in response... Well, we'll take on the rest of the world. — Courtney Milan

You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. — Rick Santorum

Many ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet. Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of society. More powerful than any religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism — Jonathon Porritt

The whole fabric of southern society must be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this government can never be, as it never has been, a true republic. — Thaddeus Stevens

Our children are our greatest treasure. They are our future. Those who abuse them tear at the fabric of our society and weaken our nation. — Nelson Mandela

Europeans say they are proud of their social fabric, of strong rights for workers and the weak in society. — David Korten

Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself. — Anthony Bourdain

If we are to prevent the fabric of our society from coming apart, we must
teach our children to excel not only academically, but also in their
appreciation of their obligation to others. — Clarence Page

Once the fabric of a just society is undone, it takes generations to weave it back together. — Deepak Chopra

I came from a war-torn country and I was a victim of that racism because within tribes, within political lines, people were fighting. The first thing that I like to fight is racism because I know what it means, how it destroys the fabric of my society, of my wellbeing. — Pearl Tan

The entailments of this metaphorical mode of thought are quite considerable: Moral standards that change with time, or social situation, or ethnicity are a danger to the functioning of society. There is no such thing as progress in morality; what is and is not moral is fixed for all time, and any change of standards in the name of would-be moral progress is really an evil, a chipping away at our moral foundations, a tearing of our moral fabric, and so on. — George Lakoff

Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole. — Thomas Sowell

Today's widespread social disharmony in relation to gender is not inevitable for human society, although it is the inevitable product of thousands of years of systemic gender injustice across the globe. Because we have never known anything else, it is difficult impossible for us to imagine what life would be like if we had grown up in a society that was truly integrated and healthy in relation to gender and sexuality. The entire fabric of human society would be vastly different from what we know today. — William Keepin

Category IV spending tends also to corrupt the people involved. All such programs put some people in a position to decide what is good for other people. The effect is to instill in the one group a feeling of almost God-like power; in the other, a feeling of childlike dependence. The capacity of the beneficiaries for independence, for making their own decisions, atrophies through disuse. In addition to the waste of money, in addition to the failure to achieve the intended objectives, the end result is to rot the moral fabric that holds a decent society together. — Milton Friedman

Ever since the Enlightenment era in the 17th and 18th Centuries - which, among other things, gave birth to the U.S. Constitution and the de facto motto E Pluribus Unum (out of the many, one) - interfaith tolerance has been sown into the fabric of Western society. The rules of one religion are not made into law for all citizens because of a simple social agreement. For you to believe what you want, you must allow me to do the same, even if we disagree. — Gudjon Bergmann

What children don't understand, and can't understand until they grow up some, is how much the whole fabric and process of human society depends on everybody agreeing to ignore, most of the time, the fact that all of us are, most of the time, inadequate, incompetent, pitiful, and, in fact, naked to our enemies. None of us really has very much in the way of spiritual, moral clothing. We dress ourselves in rags. And we agree to say nothing about it. To a very large extent, it is human charity that clothes us. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The problem in society is not kids not knowing science. The problem is adults not knowing science. They outnumber kids 5 to 1, they wield power, they write legislation. When you have scientifically illiterate adults, you have undermined the very fabric of what makes a nation wealthy and strong. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

In England especially, poetry's woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it's in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you're a poet in Ireland, you'd better know what you're doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high. — David Whyte

Racism, unfortunately, is part of the fabric of America's society. — David Scott

The fabric of society is woven together by the needle of suppression and denial. — Dov Davidoff

In our towns and cities they will continue to be born, in our communities they will go on to be nurtured & radicalised & from within our neighbourhoods they will terrorise & murder our citizens including women & children in their attempt to destroy the very fabric & order of our civilised society. They are influenced by our ignorance, our lack of knowledge is their power, martyrdom in the name of their God and prophet is their aspiration & so it is critical that we waste no time & learn more about them & this ideology they follow before we can even begin to eradicate this chilling & growing endemic Islamic faith based terrorism'. — Cal Sarwar

What was unfolding in Mumbai was unfolding elsewhere, too. In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large. The gates of the rich, occasionally rattled, remained unbreached. The politicians held forth on the middle class. The poor took down one another, and the world's great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace. — Katherine Boo

The state is the soul of man enlarged under the microscope of history. — Will Durant

Through its interpretation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court hugely shapes the fabric of our society for us and for future generations. — Herb Kohl

The problem isn't with rock lyrics, it's
with the fabric of this society itself. — Jodi Picoult

What is remarkable in Burke's first performance," wrote his great nineteenth-century biographer John Morley, "is his discernment of the important fact that behind the intellectual disturbances in the sphere of philosophy, and the noisier agitations in the sphere of theology, there silently stalked a force that might shake the whole fabric of civil society itself."4 A caustic and simplistic skepticism of all traditional institutions, supposedly grounded in a scientific rationality that took nothing for granted but in fact willfully ignored the true complexity of social life, seemed to Burke poorly suited for the study of society, and even dangerous when applied to it. Burke would warn of, and contend with, this force for the rest of his life. — Yuval Levin

What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person and what kind of a society will we have twenty years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question, the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mind-set with regard to the nature and worth of life itself that is the central question confronting mankind. Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth. — Jesse Jackson

People are pushing against the fabric of society all the time. — Andrew Vachss

Here society is reduced to its original elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources of their original natures. — Francis Parkman

It is the government's strong desire to empower this fabric, this social fabric of our society where faith-based programs large and small feel empowered, encouraged, and welcomed into changing lives. — George W. Bush

In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large. The gates of the rich, occasionally rattled, remained unbreached. — Katherine Boo

Music is supposed to be interwoven into the fabric of society; it is not supposed to be a plaything that is there to serve the population's titillation of the moment. — Billy Corgan

I think one of the greatest losses to humanity was the domination of women. I think every religious system has found ways to be kind to them in a kind of subordinate way. Very patronizing, very colonial. But if you start looking at the fabric of society, even religious systems, they would fall apart if it wasn't for the embedded ability of the women who are involved. — William P. Young

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting. — Edmund Burke

When you think about it, the Big Bang's a big like school, isn't it?
...
Well, I mean to say, one day we'll all leave here and become scientists and bank clerks and driving instructors and hotel managers
the fabric of society, so to speak. But in the meantime, that fabric, that is to say, us, the future, is crowded into one tiny little point where none of the laws of society applies, viz., this school.
-Ruprecht — Paul Murray

Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the world ... the decadent aestheticized decay and took pleasure in perversity. In decadent literature, sickness is preferable to health, not only because sickness was regarded as more interesting, but because sickness was construed as subversive, as a threat to the very fabric of society. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy and the deviant, the decadents attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived as the chief enemy of art. — Asti Hustvedt

At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions. — John Boyd Orr

Everyone wears clothing, yes? Society divides these clothing up into Men & Women's, Boys & Girls', Jr. & Miss. But society cannot decide who wears what. While the fabric may be cut to suit a traditionally male or female body (boy or girls body), the second the buyer purchases the item, that clothing no longer becomes 'boys' or 'girls' clothes, but rather, the buyers clothes. This is an example of the individual defining the identity term vs. the identity term defining the individual. — Cristina Marrero

[David Riesman] had made a hobby of studying the American Civil War and he had always been disturbed by the passions which it had unleashed in the country, the tensions and angers just below the surface, the thin fabric of the society which held it all together, so easy to rend. — David Halberstam

Blame and victim thinking are so ingrained into the fabric of our society it's hard to find a role model anywhere who simply practices personal accountability in all things. — John G. Miller

This war of choice in Iraq is undermining the very fabric of American society. — Raul Grijalva