On the Instinct of Aggression and Destruction

One must not tell the masses: Indulge in your urge for murder; it is genuinely human and best serves your well-being. One must tell them: If you satisfy your thirst for blood, you must forego many other desires. You want to eat, to drink, to live in fine homes, to clothe yourselves, and a thousand other things which only society can provide. You cannot have everything, you must choose. The dangerous life and the frenzy of sadism may please you, but they are incompatible with the security and plenty which you do not want to miss either.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 8, Human Society: The Instinct of Aggression and Destruction, 1949

Society

Society, ... always involves men acting in cooperation with other men in order to let all participants attain their own ends.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 7, Human Society: The Great Society, 1949

On Society

Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 7, Human Society: The Great Society, 1949

On the Origins of Social Cooperation

Neither love not charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 6, Human Society: The Individual Within Society, 1949

Sentimental Humanitarianism

Is not man the first thing to be considered? it will be asked.  Is he not to be given preference over abstract rights, privileges, and so forth?  What this question fails to see is that man's egotism renders impossible that kind of organization which would allow him to prosper to a degree.  When he puts himself first in this sense, the victory is Pyrrhic.  The only way to give him anything that will last is to place him in a structure where opportunity and ability may meet.  This cannot be done by considering egotistic demands first; such shortsightedness destroys the supporting structure.  Thus sentimental humanitarianism, ignorant of fundamental realities but ever attentive to desires, wrecks society.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

What the World Owes

If cities encourage man to believe that he is superior to the limitations of nature, science encourages him to believe that he is exempt from labor.  In effect, what modern man is being told is that the world owes him a living.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Commentary on the Spoiled Child Psychology of the "masses"

He has been given the notion that progress is automatic, and hence he is not prepared to understand impediments; and the right to pursue happiness he has not unnaturally translated into a right to have happiness, like a right to the franchise.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Society and Wisdom

In this they bear out the observation of Socrates that society does not mind an individual's being wise; only when he begins to make others wise does it become apprehensive.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948 

Liberty and Prosperity

In a society that honors individual liberty, the use of force to make people better off or an economy fairer is rejected.  The great irony is that, when the goal is liberty, prosperity flourishes and is well distributed.  When economic equality is the goal, poverty results.

Source:  Ron Paul, Liberty Defined (pg 49) section on Unions, 2011

Responsibility

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

Source: Herbert Spencer, State-Tamperings with Money and Banks, 1891
Taken From: Wikiquote, Herbert Spencer

Tradition

... I came to realize that traditions which are disruptive and harmful tend to disappear, whether through voluntary change, or more tragically, by the disappearance of  societies that act in accordance with them. Presumably, then, if a tradition has survived, it has some positive value, even if we cannot see it. It is a "fatal conceit" to call into question everything for which good and sufficient reason cannot be immediately given. How else can we justify the "blindly obedient" practice of wearing ties and collars, for example?

Source: Walter Block, Libertarianism and Libertinism
Taken From: Journal of Libertarian Studies, Fall 1994

Reverse Psychology

More than any other factor, inflation discredits the authority of the older generation and turns power over to youth. It is not simply a matter of the old losing their economic advantage over the young. In an inflationary environment, all the normal virtues of the old suddenly start to work against them, while all the normal vices of the young suddenly seem to look like wisdom.

Source: Paul A Cantor, Hyperinflation and Hyperreality, 1994
Taken From: See Source

Financial Standard Stability

Money is one of the primary measures of value in any society, ... As such, money is a central source of stability, continuity, and coherence in any community. Hence to tamper with the basic money supply is to tamper with a community's sense of value.

Source: Paul A Cantor, Hyperinflation and Hyperreality, 1994
Taken From:  The Fed Obliterates the Savings Ethic, Mises.org

Become that Person

A young woman in her adult Sunday School class came to [Ms Mears]. The woman complained that she had no friends. Mears asked: "If you had a friend, what would she be like?" The woman mentioned several highly positive traits. Mears said: "Then become that person."  

Source:  Henrietta Mears (d 1963), Unknown source
Taken From:  Gary North, April 9, 2011

Mass Fall, Individual Recovery

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Source:  Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Charles Mackay (1841)
Taken From:  Source

Homogeneity and the Human Spirit

The economic efficiency we praise creates one-industry towns that become simplified and vulnerable communities. Businesses evolve into big corporations that dehumanize and feudalize our lives. Our monocultures of specialization create ecological disasters. We poison our water, land and air using the justification that more and faster are always better. Mass production produces the homogeneity that deadens the spirit and vitality of people they compensate by becoming hyper-consumers, fad-chasers, unsettled and disquieted beings in search of the meaning denied to them by a loss of complexity.

Source:  The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstle (2006)
Taken from:  21st Century Breakdown by James Quinn

Winter's Waterfall

Wherever we’re headed, America is evolving in ways most of us don’t like or understand. Individually focused yet collectively adrift, we wonder if we’re heading toward a waterfall. Are we?

Source:   Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning (1997)
Taken from:  21st Century Breakdown by James Quinn

Adjusted to ill-fitting beliefs

If you're well-adjusted to ill-fitting beliefs that permeate society, you're going to have trouble

David Schnarch, Ph.D. (Passionate Marriage, 1997)

Property and Society

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of G0d, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.

John Adams 

Law and Plunder

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

Frédéric Bastiat (The Law par. L.31, 1850)