Open Society Quotes

Religious freedom in an open society has the best prospects of flourishing to the extent that it expresses itself as freedom of religious inquiry. ~ Sidney Hook

Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance. ~ Saul D. Alinsky

Entrepreneurship requires flexibility and an open society, and there will always be people who succeed and people who follow. For those who lead, they have an obligation to create a better life for the people around them. ~ Daniel A. D'Aniello

An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others. ~ George Soros

Korea is an open society and we will make sure that there is no restriction on foreign investment in Korea. ~ Lee Myung-bak

I call government that works the best for people open society, which is basically just another more general term for a democracy that is - you call it maybe a liberal democracy. It's not only majority rule but also respect for minorities and minority opinions and the rule of law. So it's really a sort of institutional democracy. ~ George Soros

I also want to take cognizance of the fact that this flight was made out in the open with all the possibilities of failure, which would have been damaging to our country's prestige. Because
great risks were taken in that regard, it seems to me that we have some right to claim that this open society of ours which risked much, gained much. ~ John F. Kennedy

Since we are living in an open society with a space for tolerance and indulgence, we must monitor assiduously the permanent changes of habits and customs and the "normality barometer" should be determined and adjusted, time after time. ("On a doggy day") ~ Erik Pevernagie

Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, made a comment that sounds almost prophetic now: that the happy, primitive society (which, by the way, never existed) is lost for all those who have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, Popper warns, the more certainly we will reach the Inquisition, the secret police, and a romanticized gangsterism. But once the existential problems of the individual, who is good by nature, can be blamed on the "evil" society, nothing stands in the way of sheer imagination. The definition of the benevolent society free of all power is only a question of fantasy. ~ Paul Watzlawick

Libraries are the mainstays of democracy. The first thing dictators do when taking over a country is close all the libraries, because libraries are full of ideas and differences of opinion, all the things we say we want in a free and open society. So keep 'em, fund 'em, embrace and cherish 'em. ~ David Baldacci

The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat. ~ George Soros

We don't stop talking about how the world might be better just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it. ~ Stephen Fry

An open society is a healthy society; transparency is necessary to trust. ~ Lauren Oliver

The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic. ~ George Soros

Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country. ~ Salman Rushdie

My hope is that light, flexible architecture might bring about a new and open society. ~ Frei Otto

Though the elite have been opened, and have opened themselves to the world, the world has not opened to all. Access is not the same as integration. But what is crucial is that no one is explicitly excluded. The effect is to blame non-elites for their lack of interest. As we have seen, the result of this logic is damning. The distinction between the elites and the rest of us appears to be a choice. It is cosmopolitanism that explains elite status to elites and closed-mindedness that explains those who choose not to participate. What matters are individual attributes and capacities, not durable inequalities. From this point of view, those who are not successful are not necessarily disadvantaged; they are simply those who have failed to seize the opportunities afforded by our new, open society. ~ Shamus Rahman Khan

I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society. ~ George Soros

Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this ... say so! ~ David Brin

The Americans of 1776 were among the first men in modern society to defend rather than to seek an open society and constitutional liberty ... Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of this political theory sits in its deep-seated conservatism. However radical the principles of the Revolution may have seemed to the rest of the world, in the minds of the colonists they were thoroughly preservative and respectful of the past. ~ Clinton Rossiter

But the truth of the matter is, we're an open society, we want to remain an open society, and there will continue to be vulnerability. That's why we have to meet the threats when they are not yet taking place on our territory and on our soil. ~ Condoleezza Rice

An open society calls itself open to improvement. It is based on the recognition that people have divergent views and interests, and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. ~ George Soros

In the eyes of Hayek and his contemporaries, the European tragedy had thus been brought about by the shortcomings of the Left: first through its inability to achieve its objectives and then thanks to its failure to withstand the challenge from the Right. Each of them, albeit in different ways, arrived at the same conclusion: the best - indeed the only - way to defend liberalism and an open society was to keep the state out of economic life. ~ Tony Judt

When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society. ~ George Soros

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it. ~ Jackson Browne

The fact that the Princess of Wales, a major international figure, and the BBC, a leading public broadcasting company, had to go to such extraordinary lengths to record an interview makes a mockery of the notion that we live in an open society. Indeed, if the programme had been the smuggled testimony of a Middle Eastern princess there would have been outraged protests about a repressive regime. ~ Andrew Morton

In an open society, no idea can be above scrutiny, just as no people should be beneath dignity. ~ Maajid Nawaz

We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans. ~ Ronald Reagan

Blasphemy is just the fanatic's name for criticism. Charb writes wisely:

'A believer can blaspheme only to the extent that the idea of blasphemy holds any meaning to him. A non-believer, no matter how hard he tries, 'cannot' blaspheme. God is sacred only to those who believe in him. If you wish to insult or offend God, you have to be sure that he exists. The strategy used by minority group activists masquerading as anti-racists is to pass off blasphemy as Islamophobia and Islamophobia as racism.'

The crucial distinction we must defend is between acts of imagination and acts of violence....Faith is not the enemy. Fanaticism is the enemy. It always is. But only a fool would deny that faith has been the seedbed of fanaticism in mankind's long and sorry struggle for the light. As much as at times we need to seek "solidarity" among unlike groups, we also need to "desolidarize," to "unsolidarize" - to put the people we know before the abstract categories we imagine. Come to think of it, making people, with all their flaws, fully visible while leaving generalized types alone is exactly what the caricaturist has always done for us. It's his special form of bravery. ~ Charb

While Financier George Soros was investing money in Kosovo's reconstruction, the George Soros Foundation for an Open Society had opened a branch office in Pristina establishing the Kosovo Foundation for an Open Society (KFOS) as part of the Soros' network of "non-profit foundations" in the Balkans. ~ Michel Chossudovsky

My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them. ~ George Soros

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the slightly driveling style employed by the journalists of tourism. 'Land of Contrasts' was our shorthand for it. ('Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and new.' 'South Africa: a harmony in black and white.' 'Belfast, where ancient meets modern.') It was as you can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a few weeks ago that my enemies in the 'peace' movement had decided to borrow from this tattered style book. The mantra, especially in the letters to this newspaper, was: 'Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country.'

Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, 'Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one'? 'Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women.' 'Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones.' 'Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime.' I could go on. (I think number four may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the 'doves' to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves saying things like, 'The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs int ~ Christopher Hitchens

We have been talking with leaders: Change is coming; you can no longer have a closed regime with an open society - satellites, social media, the Internet - you have this kind, this kind of society moving forward, and you are running this closed regime; this is not sustainable. This cannot continue. ~ Ali Babacan

You have every cause for anxiety. we are on the threshold of a more searching, more honest, more open society. there are new times just around the corner ~ Laszlo Krasznahorkai

I feel that the Christian experience and the Jewish one have much to give each other. If this open society continues and there is no return to political anti-Semitism, then this encounter, deeper than any theology, may happen. ~ Lionel Blue

A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises. ~ Saul Alinsky

The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance-these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community. ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer

When people live in the full light of an open society, paying their taxes, abiding by the rules, that makes not only our country safer and more secure because people are not relegated to living in the shadows and not creating underground economies, it also is better for wages because the fact that people are working on the books in the open means that there's greater demand for labor and you don't have this submarket. ~ Martin O'Malley

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause. ~ Rebecca West

Now look at the ideology of American supremacy. It has a solid foundation in reality; namely, the United States is the dominant power in the world. The current government believes the United States ought to use this dominant position to impose its will on the world. That is the misconception. This approach is not what made America great. America did not arrive at its dominant position by imposing its will on the world.
My position is that America is great precisely because it is an open society, and an open society recognizes that nobody is the ultimate arbiter - and that we may be wrong at times, even if we are powerful. We must be open to criticism and respect divergent and different views and interests. ~ George Soros

We live in what's called an open society, which of course means they open our emails, open our phone records, and open our medical records. ~ Jay Leno

Misconceptions play a prominent role in my view of the world. ~ George Soros

We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists. ~ Thomas Friedman

The magic of America is that we're a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom. ~ Madeleine Albright

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society - in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. ~ Thomas Friedman

There is great freedom in simplicity of living, and after I began to feel this, I found harmony in my life between inner and outer well-being. There is a great deal to be said about such harmony, not only for an individual life but also for the life of a society. It's because as a world we have gotten ourselves so far out of harmony, so way off on the material side, that when we discover something like nuclear energy we are still capable of putting it into a bomb and using it to kill people! This is because our inner well-being lags so far behind our outer well-being. ~ Peace Pilgrim

Try to keep your mind open to possibilities and your mouth closed on matters that you don't know about. Limit your 'always' and your 'nevers.' ~ Amy Poehler

The air was steeped with the heady fragrance of roses, as if the entire hall had been rinsed with expensive perfume.
"Good Lord!" she exclaimed, stopping short at the sight of massive bunches of flowers being brought in from a cart outside. Mountains of white roses, some of them tightly furled buds, some in glorious full bloom. Two footmen had been recruited to assist the driver of the cart, and the three of them kept going outside to fetch bouquet after bouquet wrapped in stiff white lace paper.
"Fifteen dozen of them," Marcus said brusquely. "I doubt there's a single white rose left in London."
Aline could not believe how fast her heart was beating. Slowly she moved forward and drew a single rose from one of the bouquets. Cupping the delicate bowl of the blossom with her fingers, she bent her head to inhale its lavish perfume. Its petals were a cool brush of silk against her cheek.
"There's something else," Marcus said.
Following his gaze, Aline saw the butler directing yet another footman to pry open a huge crate filled with brick-sized parcels wrapped in brown paper. "What are they, Salter?"
"With your permission, my lady, I will find out." The elderly butler unwrapped one of the parcels with great care. He spread the waxed brown paper open to reveal a damply fragrant loaf of gingerbread, its spice adding a pungent note to the smell of the roses.
Aline put her hand over her mouth to contain a bubbling laugh, while some undefinable emotio ~ Lisa Kleypas

So we have broad bipartisan support for the bill, and it's my hope that we can build on some of the things that have been talked about in Washington involving building a larger ownership society. ~ Harold Ford, Jr.

Winning the Pulitzer is a really mellow, fabulous thing. You don't sit and wait for them to open an envelope. You already know you won, and you have a nice lunch. Oscars are more stressful. I had to sit for three hours and wait for my category. I had to fly to Los Angeles. For the Pulitzer I just had to go up to Columbia. But, while the president of Columbia gave me the Pulitzer, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck gave me the Oscar, so that was better. ~ John Patrick Shanley

I think as a society we forget that men also have daddy issues, they've also had bad childhoods, they're vulnerable beings.. They also need love. We are made to think men don't have a hard time, and that's mainly because we've trained them not to show emotion, not to shed a tear.. but I can assure you, we men break down just like every other being. We get depressed. We get heartbroken, we get scared, lonely, butterflies.. We feel every emotion just as women do. ~ Scott Mcgoldrick

Romeo had the attention span of a slice of bread.
Which is none at all.
Every time I start to explain something, it's like not only his eyes glazed over, but his entire body. At one point, I wondered if it were possible for him to be asleep with his eyes open.
And God, he smelled good. ~ Cambria Hebert

History is boring, unless you see it from the right perspective. perspective is important.
Corn growing in a field appears orderless, till one turns the corner and sees the rows line up. a pixelized photo is unrecognizable, till one zooms out. All the the numbers are on a combination lock but it will not open till they are in the right sequence.
So it is with history - all the names, dates and places are there, but it is not until they are seen from the right perspective that lessons become clear. history is boring, until it comes into focus. ~ William J. Federer

Because I love you!"

There it was, out in the air. Griff's eyes got wide. The words had come out angry, but Dante had meant them. He couldn't open his perfect mouth and swallow them back.

His face softened. "In love, I mean. With you. For so long. ~ Damon Suede

When you're near books, amazing things happen. They can call to you just by being in the same space as you. It can be a feeling, the color or texture of a cover, or the way it somehow sets itself apart from its neighbors and asks you to open it. Then comes the crack of the spine, the random, or not-so-random-at-all page you open to, and finally the completely surprising and unexpected words you read. In that moment, you are the only person in the world holding that book and touching its pages. You can stand there for an hour and keep reading--or put it back and start again.

That can't happen of a screen. Other wonderful things can, but not that. And moments like those--of time stopping, eyes searching and minds dreaming--are rare and important in our fast-paced lives. We must protect the possibility of them.

Good luck to us! ~ Regina Spektor

The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them. ~ Charles Dickens

I don't think we live in a particularly equal society. ~ Sienna Miller

In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom. ~ Andy Summers

Society likes to file you away, put you in this or that category. And I never fit any category. Maybe that's why I was left out of a lot of things, or why my work was not really understood, because there was no precedent for it. ~ Agnes Denes

All my wisdom and knowledge is nothing compared to what a young horny man and an eager pretty woman would do after feasting on a bottle of wine and fresh sardines baked on open fire. Therefore, fuck, fuck again, and fuck more before you like everyone else fuck up your life. ~ Vinko Vrbanic

A man's genius seems to befriend the more when he reads with open heart, the masterpiece of masterminds, the sagacity of sages, and the ingenious words of geniuses of ages. ~ Ogwo David Emenike

America does to me what I knew it would do: it just bumps me. The people charge at you like trucks coming down on you
no awareness. But one tries to dodge aside in time. Bump! bump! go the trucks. And that is human contact. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Lowering his voice, he said, "In America we have a custom. When you're given presents for your birthday, you're supposed to open them and say thank you."
Tatiana nervously looked down at the present. "Thank you." Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper.
"No. Open first. Then say thank you."
She smiled. "What do I do? Do I take the paper off?"
"Yes. You tear it off."
"And then what?"
"And then you throw it away."
"The whole present or just the paper?"
Slowly he said, "Just the paper."
"But you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?"
"It's just paper."
"If it's just paper, why did you wrap it?"
"Will you please just open my present?" said Alexander ~ Paullina Simons

As a matter of fact, I fucked someone else last night."
I physically flinched at his words, my body jerking back, my knees almost giving out, my eyes wide, and my mouth open in horror. And then the worst happened. I began to cry.
Through my tears I saw Braden's lips pinch together and he took two steps towards me, his whole body bristling. "I fucking knew it," he hissed, still coming toward me.
"Don't touch me?" I yelled, not able to bear the thought of him near me now.
"Don't touch you?" He snarled, his eyes sparking violently. "I'm going to kill you!"
...
"Babe," his voice rumbled, the tenderness back, although I could still see the annoyance in his eyes. "I was so pissed off last night when you broke up with me, so I just walked away. I went to Elodie's because I knew she'd be awake worrying about Ellie and I wanted to see if she was okay. She knew something was wrong with me as soon as she let me in. I told her what had happened and she told me what she said to you at the wedding, and she also told me that wen she said that to you, you looked like you'd been slapped. And after, when we were dancing, she realized she was wrong about you." He let go of my wrists to slide his hands into my hair, tilting my head back so I couldn't look away. "I spent last night govern over and over the last six months in my head and I know you're lying to me. I know you love me, Jocelyn, because there's no fucking way I can be this in love with you, and not hav ~ Samantha Young

Angels are amongst us Angels all around If we quiet our minds, and open our hearts We will hear their heavenly sound"

- Maria Schembri ~ Susanna Mahoney

It is passing strange that our philosophers of the Revolutionary period should have formed their conception of a free society by reference to societies where everyone was not free - where, in fact, the vast majority were not free. It is no less strange that they never stopped to ask whether perhaps the characters which they so much admired were not made possible by the existence of a class which was not free. Rousseau, in whose philosophy were many things, was fully conscious of this difficulty: Must we say that liberty is possible only on a basis of slavery? Perhaps we must. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

For sure we live in a youth-obsessed culture that is constantly trying to tell us that if we're not young and glowing and "hot," we don't matter. But I refuse to buy into such a distorted view of reality. And I would never lie about or deny my age. To do so is to contribute to a sickness pervading our society - the sickness of wanting to be what you're not. I know for sure that only by owning who and what you are can you step into the fullness of life. I feel sorry for anyone who buys into the myth that you can be what you once were. The way to your best life isn't denial. It's owning every moment and staking a claim to the here and now. You're not the same woman you were a decade ago; if you're lucky, you're not the same woman you were last year. The whole point of aging, as I see it, is change. If we let them, our experiences can keep teaching us about ourselves. I celebrate that. Honor it. Hold it in reverence. And I'm grateful for every age I'm blessed to become. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Start Now, close your eyes for few minutes and then open them... so far it's going great... Now just think your three favourite things which you enjoy watching, like for example I like True Crimes, True Stories and so far Suspense. ~ Deyth Banger

As far as other important people go, university president Richard Levin believes "there are many ways to contribute to the well-being of society, and there are many forms of public service." He rejects the notion that "people who choose a business career aren't interested in being public-spirited," asserting that "what's outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose, they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live. ~ Marina Keegan

As if Spade's chivalry would allow him to do anything to a woman. The harshest punishment she could imagine him dishing out to Cat would be refusing to open a door for her. ~ Jeaniene Frost

There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides adduces a change in language as a major factor in Athens's descent from dysfunctional democracy through demagoguery into tyranny and anarchy: people began to define things in any way they pleased, he says, and the "normally accepted meaning of words" broke down. In his account of the Catiline crisis in republican Rome, Sallust has Cato the Younger identify the misuse of language - specifically the scission of word and meaning - as the underlying cause of the threat to the state. Society, Cato says, has lost the "vera vocabula rerum," literally, the "true names of things."18 In seventeenth-century England, Thomas Hobbes lived through a civil war he believed had been caused in significant measure by a war of words about religion - spread through the pervasive pamphleteering that printing had made possible - that had fatally weakened the linguistic common ground on which an ordered state depends. ~ Mark John Thompson

The abyss that divides the two modalities of experience - sacred and profane - will be apparent when we come to describe sacred space and the ritual building of the human habitation, or the varieties of the religious experience of time, or the relations of religious man to nature and the world of tools, or the consecration of human life itself, the sacrality with which man's vital functions (food, sex, work and so on) can be charged. Simply calling to mind what the city or the house, nature, tools, or work have become for modern and nonreligious man will show with the utmost vividness all that distinguishes such a man from a man belonging to any archaic society, or even form a peasant of Christian Europe. For modern consciousness, a physiological act - eating, sex, and so on - is in sum only an organic phenomenon, however much it may still be encumbered by tabus (imposing, for example, particular rules for "eating properly" or forbidding some sexual behavior disapproved by social morality). But for the primitive, such an act is never simply physiological; it is , or can become, a sacrament, that is, a communion with the sacred. ~ Mircea Eliade

Because I live in south Florida I store cans of black beans and gallons
of water in my closet in preparation for hurricane season.
I throw a hurricane party in January. You're my only guest.
We play Marco Polo in bed. The sheets are wet like the roof caved in.
There's a million of me in you. You try to count me as I taste the sweat
on the back of your neck. I call you Sexy Sexy, and we do everything twice.
After, still sweating, we drink Crystal Light out of plastic water bottles.
We discuss the pros and cons of vasectomies. It's not invasive you say.
I wrap the bedsheet around my waist. Minor surgery you say.
You slur the word surgery, like it's a garnish on a dish you just prepared.
I eat your hair until you agree to no longer talk about vasectomies.
We agree to have children someday, and that they will be beautiful even if they're not.
As I watch your eyes grow heavy like soggy clothes, I tell you When I grow up
I'm going to be a famous writer. When I'm famous I'll sign autographs
on Etch-A-Sketches. I'll write poems about writing other poems,
so other poets will get me. You open your eyes long enough to tell me
that when you grow up, you're going to be a steamboat operator.
Your pores can never be too clean you say.
I say I like your pores just fine. I say Your pores are tops.
I kiss you with my whole mouth, and you fall asleep next to my molars.
In the ~ Gregory Sherl

It is the task of the "science of man" to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. What has often been called "human nature" is but one of its many manifestations - and often a pathological one - and the function of such mistaken definition usually has been to defend a particular type of society as being the necessary one. ~ Erich Fromm

I beg you do not vote for stills and open bar-rooms in the county. ~ Thomas Jordan Jarvis

With the other fellow actors who have gone astray, I think it's sad that society wants to label the business as doing this to people. It's really not true. ~ Tina Yothers

Systems of thought, and their antitheses as well, are merely codifications of what we think we know. When we begin to abandon them, we open ourselves to the immensity of the universe, and therefore also to immense possibilities, including the possibility of the impossible. ~ Salman Rushdie