Civilized Society Quotes

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food. ~ Jill Lepore

It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets. ~ Alan Bennett

Schoolchildren are asked to write essays on what William Blake thought about the Tiger; despite the fact that William Blake was a nutjob whose opinions, in a civilized society, would be of no interest to anybody apart from his parole officer. ~ Mark Forsyth

The American people expect the United States to keep terrorists where they belong, apart from civilized society and outside of America's borders ~ Eric Cantor

The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God: the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues-these these never can be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how any civilized society can exist without them. ~ Joseph Story

Most of us, in our civilized society, rely too heavily on reasoning capacity to make things happen. We've been raised to believe that logic will prevail. Logic, in and of itself, will rarely influence people. Most often logic doesn't work. ~ Herb Cohen

Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society. ~ David Hume

There is no such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and constitute even the rudest of society, self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support ... ~ Edward Bellamy

He had had many conversations during his long life. Some were fascinating and stayed with him more than a century later. Others were less so. As a younger man he had tolerated those as part of the cost of doing business - a sort of tax that all people must pay in order to take part in civilized society. When he had turned one hundred, he had decided to stop paying that tax. Henceforth he would engage only in conversations that really interested him - which, with a few exceptions for close friends and family members, meant conversations with a purpose. ~ Neal Stephenson

Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That's where it will be. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Trees are great messengers of peace. One of the worst crimes of modern humankind is indiscriminate cutting down of the trees, and forests, in the pursuit of establishing civilization. No wonder, that modern civilized society has everything but peace. ~ Banani Ray

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions ... but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. ... ~ Jon Meacham

I don't believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so called civilized-society ~ Richard Ramirez

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding ... and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to be ... . But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. ~ Noam Chomsky

Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive even those who have committed barbaric acts. If Angulimala is capable of renouncing violence, then tell me, your Majesty: is your civilized society also capable of being truly civilized and renouncing violence? ~ Satish Kumar

I have shaped and nourished my mind for years to hail all women on earth as my sisters and their problems as my problems. When I am engaged in a conversation with one of my sisters anywhere in the world, my eyes are not subconsciously driven to take a quick peek down her blouse. I belong to all women, all men, everywhere, as a brother. And being a brother calls for the responsibility of thinking, feeling and behaving like a brother, instead of a potential mate-hunter. Here I am by no means insinuating that all men should see all women as sisters, rather I am pointing out that all civilized men should at the very least have the decency to see women as persons, and not as objects of sexual gratification or as potential mating partners, because only then we shall succeed as a conscientious species to give a safe and non-predatory environment to our children. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The ancient Greeks could laugh at themselves. The Romans could not. That is why France is a civilized society and Spain is not. ~ John Fowles

Be they pharaohs or freeholders, barons or farmers, landowners have been the most capable, most intrepid, and most assertive members of civilized society. ~ David Marusek

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. ~ Mark Skousen

Today an educated, civilized society is turning its face while thousands of unborn babies are being killed. God Himself, if not history, will judge this greater holocaust. ~ Billy Graham

Courage, conscience and compassion, these are the real Trinity of a civilized society. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Every civilized society must disarm its citizens against each other. ~ Garry Wills

We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down. ~ Philip Pullman

Here's the worst detail of all - worse than Wham! even, if you can believe it. It all happened at Applebee's. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a snob. I don't have a problem with Applebee's per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn't change there. Significant things shouldn't begin or end at Applebee's. You shouldn't walk into Applebee's as one thing and then leave as something else entirely. She ~ Matthew Norman

Anger at injustice has righted more wrongs than most other things, and it is one of the great creative forces in a civilized society. ~ Anne Perry

It just hangs there. This little... flap of flesh. And there's so much fuss that we make about it. I think the reason we fight wars is because we wear clothes. Because no one knows–between the men, I mean–who has the bigger... weenie. So. if I'm a guy with a small one, I'm going to build a really big building or take over a really big piece of land or write a really long book so the other men don't know, right? But see, it never really works, that's the problem. I mean, you conquer the country, or whatever, but you're still wearing clothes, so there's no way to prove absolutely whose is bigger or smaller. And that's what we call a civilized society. The whole world run by a bunch of men with pricks the size of pins. ~ David Henry Hwang

Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can't have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a an was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were to uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man's worth couldn't be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorneys or politicians, therefore we couldn't cheat. We really were in a bad way before the white men came, and I don't know how we managed to get along without these basic things which, we are told, are absolutly necessary to make a civilized society. ~ John Lame Deer

Good sex is the basis of any truly civilized society. ~ Gil A. Waters

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind. ~ Samuel Johnson

A civilized society is formed when every individual in that society are bound to obey the rules and regulation which is for the benefit of their own society. ~ Santosh Kalwar

But when our elected officials and our political campaign become entirely untethered to reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn't matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations. It threatens the values of respect and tolerance that we teach our children and that are the source of America's strength. It frays the habits of the heart that underpin any civilized society -- because how we operate is not just based on laws, it's based on habits and customs and restraint and respect. ~ President Barack Obama

It did not take Bunch very long, amid the politicking and the revelry, to discover the darker side of life in Charleston's homes. "The frightful atrocities of slaveholding must be seen to be described," he wrote in a private letter that wound up prominently positioned in the official slave-trade correspondence of the Foreign Office. "My next-door neighbor, a lawyer of the first distinction and a member of the Southern Aristocracy, told me himself that he flogged all his own people - men and women - when they misbehaved. I hear also that he makes them strip, and after telling them that they were to consider it as a great condescension on his part to touch them, gives them a certain number of lashes with a cow-hide. The frightful evil of the system is that it debases the whole tone of society - for the people talk calmly of horrors which would not be mentioned in civilized society. It is literally no more to kill a slave than to shoot a dog. ~ Christopher Dickey

We are living in an increasingly feminized society. Some people view that as an increasingly civilized society, but it has left our boys with deep desires for honor but few outlets for displaying it appropriately. ~ Cindy Rollins

Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf

Poverty is the openmouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough. ~ Henry George

Money was the blood of civilized society, its currents running through everything and everyone. Where money was insufficient, things withered. People starved, sickened and died, constructions eroded, even ideas perished. Where funds were plentiful, the same things blossomed with new life.
And money was, in the end, little more than the product of collective imagination. A slip of paper or a coin had no value beyond that of the material it was fashioned of. It only took on a life of its own when people as a whole collectively agreed that certain papers and coins were worth something.
Only then did people bleed and die for it. For a fantasy, a faith given form in hard, concrete numbers.
Then again, much of society was built on a series of shared delusions. Clothing was little more than scraps of particular materials with particular geometries, but people clung to the idea of fashion. Style. Good and bad fashion was another belief system, one which all members of a culture were indoctrinated into. Breaking certain conventions didn't only challenge the aesthetic sensibilities of others, but it challenged their sense of self. It reminded them, subconsciously, of the very pretendings they clung to.
Only those with power could stand against society's tides, flaunt the collective's 'safe' aesthetic. When one had enough power, others couldn't rise against them and safely say something calculated to reduce their own dissonance and remind the offending party of the u ~ Wildbow

I think that the essence of a free and civilized society is that everything in it should be subject to criticism, that all forms of authority, should be treated with a certain reservation. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

I think you will agree the sign of a civilised society is a regular dining schedule. ~ Philippa Ballantine

Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society. ~ Lame Deer

The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life. ~ Desmond Tutu

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization. ~ Felix Adler

Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise. ~ J. Maarten Troost

Speak out, educate, do not be intimidated by the apologists, and do not let extreme racism be mainstreamed. Hopefully there will come a time when we don't need to tell our kids that Halloween is no excuse for hate, and that blackface has no place in a civilized society. ~ Christine Pelosi

In civilized society, we humans are responsible for nurturing and sustaining the force of inter-relational harmony in our lives. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. ~ Ayn Rand

Libel actions, when we look at them in perspective, are an ornament of a civilized society. They have replaced, after all, at least in most cases, a resort to weapons in defense of a reputation. ~ Henry Anatole Grunwald

Kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society. ~ Cesar Chavez

Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system. ~ Samuel Johnson

A generous basic state pension is the least a civilized society should offer those who have worked hard and saved through their whole lives. ~ George Osborne

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another. ~ Sigmund Freud

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. ~ Eugene V. Debs

With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don't think it's human to become an agent of the angel of death. ~ Elie Wiesel

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef. ~ Oscar Wilde

I understand that art is a necessary component of a civilized society, but you cannot just go around shooting people. That's going to be a problem. ~ Kevin Wilson

There are six canons of conservative thought:

1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist," says Keith Feiling: "he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom." True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.

2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls "Logicalism" in society. This prejudice has been called "the conservatism of enjoyment"--a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot "the proper source of an animated Conservatism."

3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a "classless society." With reason, conservatives have been called "the party of order." If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

4) P ~ Russell Kirk

Cathy smiled back 'Rules were meant to be broken.'

'Don't disagree,' Oversteegen replied immediately. 'Indeed they are. Providin', however, that the one breakin' the rules is willin' t' pay the price for it, and the price gets charged in full. Which you were, Lady Catharine. I saluted you for it then–at the family dinner table that night, in fact. My mother was infinitely more indisposed thereafter; tottered back t' her bed cursin' me for an ingrate. My father was none too pleased either. I salute you for it, again. Otherwise, breakin' rules becomes the province of brats instead of heroes. Fastest way I can think t' turn serious political affairs int' a playpen. A civilized society needs a conscience, and conscience can't be developed without martyrs - real ones - against which a nation can measure its crimes and sins. ~ David Weber

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. ~ Ayn Rand

These are the now-endangered markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers safety and compensation laws, pure foods and safe drugs, Social Security, Medicare and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels. ~ Bill Moyers

This is kind of a sticky situation, isn't it, Gurudas?" she says. "I told you two that if I caught either of you on my property again I'd expose a goodly amount of your innards to the fresh sea air. And I hate breaking promises. That's what whole of civilized society is founded upon, isn't it - promises? ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. ~ Mark Skousen

No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law. ~ James F. Cooper

Marriage is in fact, one of the healthiest social constructs of the civilized society. ~ Abhijit Naskar

No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Be one and be civilized. By civilized I don't mean that phony kind of civilized pretense where you pretend to be egalitarian, yet the moment your kid brings home a partner of color, or of a different religion, you instantaneously burst out in shock and try either to break them apart by all cheap means available, or to convert your future in-law into your own religion. Such primitive act is no different from the acts of terrorism. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society. ~ John Paul Stevens

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men ... In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. ~ G.K. Chesterton

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies. ~ Denis Diderot

The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome. ~ Edward Gibbon

In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Science lacks something very important that religion provides: a moral code. Survival of the fittest is a scientific fact, but it is a cruel ethic; the way of beasts, not a civilized society. Laws can only take us so far, and they must be based upon something - a shared moral code that rises from something. As that moral foundation recedes, so will society's values. ~ A.G. Riddle

One human's despair is all humans' despair - one human's joy is all humans' joy - one human's accomplishments are all humans' accomplishments. Such should be the genuine thinking of a civilized and conscientious human, if there is to be peace and harmony in the world. ~ Abhijit Naskar

You don't understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in all of us ... I don't believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society ... You maggots make me sick! Hypocrites one and all ... I don't need to hear all of society's rationalizations. I've heard them all before ... legions of the night, night breed, repeat not the errors of the night prowler and show no mercy. ~ Richard Ramirez

Every Nigerian must begin to raise their voice against our societal failures and call them as such at every juncture. In this way we could all bring about a modern, progressive and civilized society. ~ Sunday Adelaja

A healthy, civilized society can absorb some anger and dysfunction, as a healthy immune system can absorb some disease. But a massive buildup of anger and mean-spiritedness bombarding our social system day in and day out in millions upon millions of individual doses overwhelms our societal defenses. Medicine does little good in the absence of a healthy immune system. Likewise police and other institutional efforts to counter violence do little good, ultimately, in the absence of our individual efforts to deal with it. Violence is routed out of the world only by being routed out of our minds. Hatred is diseased thinking. Just as a cancer cell was a healthy cell that then transformed, so is hatred, love gone wrong. ~ Marianne Williamson

You mix the affluence of the white and the poverty of the black and you do not get a civilized society. Integration on an equal level is one thing. Mixing on an unequal level is another. ~ Marya Mannes

At least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone's phone conversation without a warrant issued by court. That's more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism. ~ Vladimir Putin

This is the way a civilized society begins to devour itself. By allowing our political leaders and law enforcement officials to scapegoat one segment of our population - to turn innocent people into targets of suspicion, into the enemy - we demean all that is good and decent about our nation. ~ Arsalan Iftikhar

I think, therefore I am, but that's not all - what I think and how I think, determine what I am - an animal or a human. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I feel we all have the obligation, myself. I want to live in a more humane, civilized society, and I feel like the only way we're going to achieve that is if we all take it upon ourselves. I just wish we could be a more caring society. I feel like we're social Darwinists who believe that everyone has to make it on their own. But the reality is that we all don't start out on the same footing. ~ Natalie Merchant

[Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams - dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society - in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science ... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams. ~ Richard Rorty

The expectations of civilized society should afford all the protection a person needs. But that armor is rendered as thin as a tissue when one is dealing with the uncivilized. -Bene Gesserit Archives ~ Brian Herbert

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential. ~ Willard Gaylin

Bulls can do nothing to demand justice. They can only defend themselves as best they can in a fight with a pre-determined ending and die never knowing why they were forced to endure such a painful and prolonged death. It's up to us, as a civilized society, to call for an end to the Running of the Bulls and bullfighting. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

If these two noticed Angel's growing social ineptness, he noticed their growing mental limitations. Felix seemed to him all Church; Cubbert all College...Each brother candidly recognized there were a few unimportant scores of millions outside in civilized society, persons who were neither University men nor churchmen; but they were to be tolerated rather than reckoned with and respected. ~ Thomas Hardy

A truly civilized society establishes the values and morals which distinguish human beings from animals. ~ Hatem A. Aly

The United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. I believe that in a democratic, civilized society none of our people should be hungry or living in desperation. We need to expand Social Security, not cut it. We need to increase funding for nutrition programs, not cut them. ~ Bernie Sanders

The way she told it, the English counties are littered with aging spinsters who accidentally displayed a spark of intelligence at a debutante dance and were banished forever from civilized society ~ Michelle Cooper

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them. ~ Nicholas Meyer

Therefore, to teach them [women] at least an outline of economics and law is the first requirement after giving them a general education. Figuratively speaking, it will be like providing the women of civilized society with a pocket dagger for self-protection. ~ Fukuzawa Yukichi

Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

The measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls. ~ First Lady Michelle Obama

Dystopia is not always an unhappy place. There are, as it happens, certain dystopias in which it's perfectly possible to be happy as a clam. Vast numbers of people go through life never even realizing that they're in one, might live through the real-time decay from freedom to tyranny and never notice the change.
It basically comes down to wanderlust.
Imagine your life as a path extending through time and society. To either side are fences festooned with signs: No Trespassing, Keep Off the Grass, Thou Shalt Not Kill. These are the constraints on your behavior, the legal limits of acceptable conduct. You are free to wander anywhere between these barriers-- but cross one and you risk the weight of the law.
Now imagine that someone starts moving those fences closer together.
How you react-- whether you even notice-- depends entirely on how much you wandered beforehand. A lot of people never deviate from the center of the path their whole lives, would never understand what all those fringe radicals are whining about; after all, *their* lives haven't changed any. It makes no difference to them whether the fences are right on the shoulder or out past the horizon.
For the rest of us, though, it's only a matter of time before you wander back to a point you've always been free to visit in the past, only to find a fence suddenly blocking your way. ~ Peter Watts

But if you grow up in a society which is rotten to the core, where you can cheerfully ignore the rules if you have power and status, where your superiors will screw you over if they happen to need a scapegoat . . . you wind up with very little respect for those rules. ~ Christopher G. Nuttall

It is well that we remember that the trials, difficulties, and experiences of life all have purpose. There came to me on the occasion of a year in my life to be remembered when the lovely sisters of our Relief Society wrote this as a prayer in my behalf. It was entitled 'May You Have':
"Enough happiness to keep you sweet,
Enough trials to keep you strong,
Enough sorrow to keep you human,
Enough hope to keep you happy,
Enough failure to keep you humble,
Enough success to keep you eager,
Enough wealth to meet your needs,
Enough enthusiasm to look forward,
Enough friends to give you comfort,
Enough faith to banish depression,
Enough determination to make each day better than yesterday.
"This is my prayer for the faithful Saints in every land and throughout the world as we look forward to the future with courage and with fortitude ~ Harold B. Lee