Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Culture and  Anarchy, preface.

   It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in our society today† This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

-Asimov, Isaac
 'My Own View', in R Holdstock (ed) Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978).

Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  The Advancement of Learning, bk.2.

No wonder the really powerful men in our society, whether politicians or scientists, hold writers in contempt.Theydoit becausetheyget no evidence from modern literature that anybody is thinking about any significant question.

-Bellow, Saul
  Interview in The Paris Review, no.37, winter issue.

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined.

-Book of Common Prayer
Solemnization of Marriage, Exhortation.

Whatevereachmancanseparatelydo, withouttrespassing upon others, he has a right to dofor himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all whichsociety, with all its combination of skill and force, can do in his favour.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Society is indeed a contract†it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man less, but nature more.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza178.

Hablando siempre y siempre contando chismes y haciendo chistes y siempre y tambie¤  n filosofando o estetizando o moralizando, siempre: la cuestio¤  n era hacer ver como que no trabaja¤  bamos porque en La Habana, Cuba, esa es la  u¤ nica manera de ser gente bien. Talking all the time and telling jokes or gossiping all the time and always and also philosophizing or aestheticizingor moralizing, but always: thething wasto make it look like we didn't have to work because in Havana,Cuba, this is the only way to be high society. . .

-Cabrera Infante, Guillermo
  Tres tristes tigres ( Three Trapped Tigers,1971),'Bachata'.

There is no virtue in producing socially well adjusted members of society who are unemployed becausethey donot havetheskills.Noratthe otherextrememustthey be technically efficient robots.

-Baron
  Speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, reprinted in the Times Higher Education Supplement,15 Oct. This speech began the so-called'Great Debate'on education.

Architecture cannot be understood without some knowledge of the society it serves.

-Casson, Sir Hugh Maxwell
  An Introduction to Victorian  Architecture.

Society is composed of two large classes; those who have more dinners than appetites, and those with more appetites than dinners.

-Chamfort, Se¤  bastien-Roch Nicolas
Maximes et Pense¤  es (1795), ch.1.

Our noble society for providing the infant negroes inthe West Indies with flannel waistcoats and moral pocket handkerchiefs.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^7  Rev Mr Stiggins. Pickwick Papers, ch.27.

As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires that heshould retrieve his fortunes by marriage. Society requires that he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a handsome establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise, what he has to do with marriage. Bleak House

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^7  Mrs Merdle. Little Dorrit, bk.1, ch.33.

   L'homme est ne¤   pour la socie¤  te¤  ; se¤  parez-le, isolez-le, ses ide¤  es se de¤  suniront, son caracte'  re se tournera, mille affections ridicules s'e¤  le'  veront dans son coeur; des 274 pense¤  es extravagantes germeront dans son esprit, comme les ronces dans une terre sauvage. Man is born to live in society: separate him, isolate him, and his ideas disintegrate, his character changes, a thousand ridiculous affectations rise up in his heart; extreme thoughts take hold in his mind, like the brambles in a wild field.

-Diderot, Denis
  La Religieuse.

   Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.

-Doctorow, E(dgar) L(awrence)
  In the International Herald Tribune,1 Oct.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

-Washington Bailey
  Speech in Washington DC, commemorating the 24th anniversary of emancipation.

If the idea of society were extinguished in individual minds and the beliefs, traditions and aspirations of the group were no longer felt and shared by individuals, society would die.We can say of it what we just said of divinity: it is real only in so far as it has a place in the human consciousness, and this place is whatever we may give it.

-Durkheim, EŁ  mile
  The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (translated by Joseph Ward Swain,1965).

   Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
^2  Middlemarch, bk.1, ch.1.

The society that will organize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of the state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.

-Engels, Friedrich
  The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.