* It's crucial to understand that as a society, we can reorganize. We can reorganize socially, politically, and economically, and we can reorganize according to our values.
-- Rebecca Adamson

In a society where all are related, simple decisions require the approval of nearly everyone in that society. It is society as a whole, not merely a part of it, that must survive. This is the indigenous understanding. It is the understanding in a global sense. We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along. -- Rebecca Adamson

* We have the ability to achieve, if we master the necessary goodwill, a common global society blessed with a shared culture of peace that is nourished by the ethnic, national and local diversities that enrich our lives.-- Mahnaz Afkhami

* In this society the young people from the cities and from the countryside, professionals or not, often unemployed, have all means to join and reinforce our efforts to raise the brave torch of Human Rights that illuminates the way in which the future of us all is decided.
-- Martin Almada

* “I believe there should be a part of society that conscientiously works as a ‘critical partner’ of the government.”
-- Dewi Rana Amir

The right to development is the measure of the respect of all other human rights.That should be our aim: a situation in which all individuals are enabled to maximize their potential, and to contribute to the evolution of society as a whole. 
-- Kofi Annan

"Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential."
~ Kofi Annan

* "In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed... It means facing a system that does not lend its self to your needs and devising means by which you change that system."
-- Ella Baker

  * "Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development."
-- Harry Belafonte

* Under your shoulders. Dear young people of the entire world, weigh the responsibility to transform tomorrow's world into a society where peace, harmony and fraternity reign.
-- Bishop Carlos Belo

"When a society is organized around that which is fitting in each realm, then peace, the fruit of justice, can flourish."
-- Leonardo Boff

* How are we going to make our livings in a society becoming increasingly jobless because of hi-tech and outsourcing? Where will we get the imagination to recognize that for most of human history the concept of Jobs didn’t even exist? Work, as distinguished from Labor, was done to produce needed goods and services, develop skills and artistry, and nurture cooperation.
-- Grace Lee Boggs

* The ultimate test of a moral society
is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

* The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
-- Elise Boulding

* Many people think that hunger is unavoidable in any society, even a society that is blessed with great abundance. That is not true. The European community does not have widespread hunger. America, which leads the world in so many ways, can end childhood hunger within its borders.
-- Pierce Brosnan

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.
-- Pearl S. Buck

“There is no level playing field. Any time our society says that a powerful chemical company has the same right as a low income family that's living next door, that playing field is not level, is not fair.”
-- Robert Bullard

The United Nations exists not merely to preserve the peace but also to make change - even radical change - possible without violent upheaval. The United Nations has no vested interest in the status quo. It seeks a more secure world, a better world, a world of progress for all peoples. In the dynamic world society which is the objective of the United Nations, all peoples must have equality and equal rights. -- Ralph J. Bunche

* Democracy is not just a question of having a vote. It consists of strengthening each citizen’s possibility and capacity to participate in the deliberations involved in life in society.
-- Fernando Cardoso

* I believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Since periods of change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world.
-- The Dalai Lama

* "We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."
-- Angela Davis

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.
-- Eugene V. Debs, 1908

The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a life.
-- Justice William O. Douglas

* "What we need is an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal, steady and continuous."
-- Peter F. Drucker

The individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our society.
-- Peter F. Drucker

* The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
-- Albert Einstein

* "...gender relationships, which are tough for people to deal with, are key to whether a society orients to domination or partnership in all its relations."
-- Riane Eisler

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

* We must apply our humble efforts to the construction of a more just and humane world. And I want to declare emphatically: Such a world is possible. To create this new society, we must present outstretched and friendly hands, without hatred and rancor, even as we show great determination and never waver in the defense of truth and justice. Because we know that we cannot sow seeds with clenched fists. To sow we must open our hands.
-- Adolfo Perez Esquivel

* "The ultimate object of education should be, Gandhi said, to help create not only a balanced and harmonious individual but also a balanced and harmonious society where true justice prevails, where there is no unnatural division between the "haves" and the "have-nots," and where everybody is assured of a living wage and the right to live and the right to freedom."
-- Arun Gandhi

"It will take a massive effort to move society from corporate domination, in which industry's rights to pollute and damage health and the environment supersede the public's right to live, work, and play in safety. This is a political fight. The science is already there, showing that people's health is at risk. To win, we will need to keep building the movement, networking with one another, planning, strategizing, and moving forward. Our children's futures, and those of their unborn children, are at stake." ~ Lois Gibbs

Our society is only as healthy as our most vulnerable citizens. It is unconscionable that the weakest links in our country are our hungry children. No other Western industrialized nation has widespread hunger within its borders. We really must put an end to hunger in the United States if we are to keep our prosperity and protect the future.
-- Linda Gray

* "If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh

So long as private corporations remain the dominant production institution of society, no matter who is in power, the long-run trend in society will be to promote the corporate interest.
-- Michael Harrington

Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than submit to the desolation of an empty abundance.
-- Michael Harrington

* If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come from the grass roots up, not from the top down.
~ Paul Hawken

* "To me, love, spirituality and life are all the same thing. To me they're all about honoring the circle, and they're just different ways of defining the same understanding. Our society as a whole, because we have placed our love for money above our love for life, has devalued the sacred and devalued love."
-- Julia Butterfly Hill

We are at the very point in time when a 400-year old age is dying and another is struggling to be born - a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community and ethics such as the world has never know, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.
-- Dee Ward Hock, founder of Visa

There has always been a longing in the human heart for a more just, free, loving and creative society. But it was never before possible to fulfill these aspirations, because we had neither the evolutionary drivers and global crises to force us to change, nor did we have the scientific and technological powers that can free us from the limitations of scarcity, poverty, disease, and ignorance. This is the time of awakening for the social potential movement. -- Barbara Marx Hubbard

The social potential movement is on the threshold of a mass awakening, seeking to carry into society what individuals have learned spiritually and personally. -- Barbara Marx Hubbard

The basis of peace and stability, in any society, has to be the fullest respect for the human rights of all its people.
-- John Hume

"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."
-- Thomas Jefferson

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.
-- Thomas Jefferson

* How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance -- the one value that is indispensable in creating community.
-- Barbara Jordan

* A truly free society must not include a "peace" which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.
-- Petra Kelly

* We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power... a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

* We have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society. We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who finds himself in misery and agony on life's highway. But one day, we must ask the question of whether an edifice which produces beggars must not be restructured and refurbished.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

* Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more just society.
-- Yuri Kochiyama

* Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make non-violence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development, for economic and political justice and for violence control.
-- Dennis Kucinich

Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally. Nationalities should form the constitutive links in a great world alliance, and must be guaranteed an independent life in the realm of the spiritual and for locally delimited tasks, while economic and political objectives must be guided internationally in a spirit of peaceful cooperation for the promotion of mankind's common interests. -- Christian Lange

* "No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy."
-- Frances Moore Lappé

* Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.
-- Frances Moore Lappé

* "This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security."
-- Michael Lerner

* Justice and truth are the common ties of society
-- John Locke

* "Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."
-- Nelson Mandela

You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself.
-- Nelson Mandela

* “In Iroquois society, leaders are encouraged to remember seven generations in the past and consider seven generations in the future when making decisions that affect the people.”
-- Wilma Mankiller

* Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.
-- George Mason

* "We won't have a society if we destroy the environment"
~ Margaret Mead

"No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded."
-- Margaret Mead

* You can't talk about the environment, you can't talk about political correctness, affirmative action and all the other innumerable things that freedom is about, unless you have a free society based upon the integrity of the individual. If you have a responsible society, these other issues will not come up in a responsible society, and that is what freedom is all about.
-- Russell Means

* The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them.
– Maria Montessori

* "I always try to see things with children's eyes. Are they happy? Sad? What do they need? Everywhere I went, I realized that children are society's victims … We have a duty to speak to political leaders, to influence people to give these children a better future."
-- Nana Mouskouri

* "Society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal."
-- Robert Owen

One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realize that having more and more won't solve the problem, and happiness does not lie in possessions, or even relationships: The answer lies within ourselves. If we can't find peace and happiness there, it's not going to come from the outside.
-- Tenzin Palmo

* Thinking about how the world might be and envisioning a society characterized by justice are the essence of conceptualizing the conditions that comprise positive peace. If we are to educate for peace, both teachers and students need to have some notion of the transformed world we are educating for.
-- Betty Reardon

* ...if our humanity – our soul as a society – is overtaken by the materiel and cosmetic, there will be no hope of peace.
~ Robert Redford

Dream of a society at peace with its conscience because it respects and lives in harmony with all life forms.
-- John Robbins

The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1755

Economic policies absorb almost the entire attention of government, and at the same time become ever more impotent. The simplest things, which only fifty years ago one could do without difficulty, cannot get done any more. The richer a society, the more impossible it become to do worthwhile things without immediate payoff.
~ E. F. Schumacher

* "We have to promote human solidarity, avoid indifference, and play a part with society in the solution of the problem of violence..."
-- Shakira

If we were to convince society to strive towards creating a better world,
we would address all of the problems that endanger our future.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

Humanity has been evolving a global consciousness,
and with new technologies in social networking,
we now have the chance to form a true "global society." -- Robert Alan Silverstein

In our hectic, fast-paced, consumer-driven society, it's common to feel overwhelmed, isolated and alone. Many are re-discovering the healing and empowering role that community can bring to our lives. The sense of belonging we feel when we make the time to take an active role in our communities can give us a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* I know what it feels like to be hurt,and I don't want to cause that pain to any other person or creature. But somehow, in society, we numb ourselves in order to make money or to feel better about ourselves, such as with cosmetics or food. We say to ourselves, I'm going to use this animal. I'm going to say it doesn't have much worth so that I can allow myself to do these cruel things. And that just isn't fair.
-- Alicia Silverstone

Radical transformation of society requires personal and spiritual change first or at least simultaneously
-- Sulak Sivaraksa

* Social entrepreneurs come from all levels of society and from communities in nearly every country of the world. They all share the same underlying drive and passion to see their ideas through. Many of them have had a huge effect on the world, yet most people have not even heard of them – a trend we hope to change!
-- Jeffrey Skoll

* Can we make a better world for our children? I believe we can, if enough people are concerned and get involved in changing what is wrong with society.
-- Dr. Benjamin Spock

* This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.
-- Gloria Steinem

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson

* A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.
-- Marlo Thomas

I think we're creating a situation that's incredibly dangerous. There's a lot of chat at the moment about the war on terror and whilst there are many causes for acts of terrorism, what kind of society are you creating if you allow civil society in Africa to die and create millions upon millions of orphans? Where are they going to go? What kind of cults, what kind of militias, what's going to happen? The accession of violence in those countries, the possibility of that, to me is very terrifying.
-- Emma Thompson

"The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely... because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile."
-- Alvin Toffler

"Poverty is not something people impose on themselves for want of effort and community organisation. It is constructed by divisive and discriminatory laws, inflexible organisations, acquisitive ideologies of wealth, a deeply rooted class system and policies which serve privilege in the short term and destroy society in the long term."
-- Peter Townshend

* "Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve, because we all benefit from society."
-- Kathleen Turner

You shouldn't get to live in society and give nothing back. People complain about their taxes, yet they do nothing for the community. That makes me furious.
-- Kathleen Turner

“We women have presented an alternative proposal to society and to humanity. It is about the construction of a world where tolerance is a life style; Where daily social and political divergences and its resolutions would be seen as part of humanity; Where equality would be possible in all its dimensions; Where knowledge and access to education and other social possessions would not be the privilege of a few; A world where violence in all its forms would be past history, where fear will not overwhelm us and where we shall be able to enjoy the goodness of existence.”
~ Rafaela vos Obeso

When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.
-- Wendell Wilkie

Declaration of the Peace People:

We have a simple message for the world from this movement for peace.
We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society.
We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, lives at home, at work and at play to be lives of joy and peace.
We recognize that to build such a life demands of all of us dedication, hard work and courage.
We recognize that there are many problems in our society which are a source of conflict and violence.
We recognize that every bullet fired and every exploding bomb makes that work more difficult.
We reject the use of the bomb and the bullet and all the techniques of violence.
We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.
-- Betty Williams

We have to speak out now on behalf of our community and on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing and say "No, we are not rolling over" and "No, this is not a corporate enterprise." This is democracy in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence and those are the cornerstones of a just society.
~ Terry Tempest Williams

* The Department of Peace would take a more human approach to healing our society, looking not merely for ways we can destroy an enemy, but for more powerful ways to create new friends. While the State Department engages in international diplomacy, there is no domestic parallel. There is no department seeking to harness the power of a nonviolent heart.
-- Marianne Williamson