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Social system   /sˈoʊʃəl sˈɪstəm/   Listen
Social system

noun
1.
The people in a society considered as a system organized by a characteristic pattern of relationships.  Synonyms: social organisation, social organization, social structure, structure.  "Sociologists have studied the changing structure of the family"






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"Social system" Quotes from Famous Books



... Northern newspaper would have attracted no special attention, and might merely have furnished food to an occasional reader for serious thought upon a subject not exactly agreeable; but coming from a colored man, in a Southern city, it was an indictment of the laws and social system of the South that could not fail of creating ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... territory for their surplus population; great nations desire territory to extend their trade, and when there are several great powers to divide the spoil they distribute it among themselves and call it "spheres of influence", and all in honor of the god Commerce. In China the fundamentals of our social system are brotherhood and ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... to school at 9)," he writes, "I was already of an affectionate disposition, an affection turned readily to either sex. No boy was the cause of my inclinations, which were quite spontaneous. (No doubt, part of the cause may be found in our social system, by which ladies are rather drawing-room creatures to be treated with distant respect.) When I was 10, at a preparatory school, I first began to form attachments with other boys of my own age, in which I always had regard ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... press, supports the same view of the necessity of slavery to the christianization and civilization of a barbarous race. My argument for the benevolence of the relation of master and slave, drawn from the four relations ordained of God for the organization of the social system (the fourth being the servile relation, or the relation of master and slave) leads conclusively to the recognition of some great benevolent design ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... much below the men's. They've sat there wondering whether they can risk a strike. Women—it's notorious,' she flung it out on a wave of passion, 'women everywhere suffer most from the evils of our social system. Why not? They've had no hand in it! Our social system is the work of men! Yet we must work to uphold it! this system that crushes us. We must swell the budget, we must help to pay the bill! What fools we've all been! What fools we are ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... conspicuous among the civilised nations of the earth: when he called these things to mind and dwelt upon them, he felt certain that the national gratitude MUST relieve him from the consequences of his late proceedings, and would certainly restore him to his old place in the happy social system. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... conditions of the place in which he has to spend many lives, for, according to what he has done in one life, so must he contend with in the next. If, while possessing physical and mental strength in one body, he assists in upholding a corrupt social system which takes from the weak and gives to the strong, he must expect these same conditions to exist when he returns as a weakling. For as long as hogs are bred and slaughtered, so must he take his chances of being one of them. How ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... life and its possibilities, of old cults and new philosophies, of books and places; of the endless struggles of men like himself to be intellectually honest and spiritually free. But oftenest we speak of the people around us, the people on whom the injustices of a selfish social system fall most heavily; and among them, sharing their hardships, understanding their burdens, recognizing their limitations and weaknesses, leading and directing them, he has found life in losing it, and it ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... BROOKS was of opinion that the corset would tariff it were subjected to any more strain in the way of duties. Mr. MARSHALL remarked that the corset avoided a great deal of Waist. It was whalebone of his bone, or something of that sort. It was one of the main Stays of our social system. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various

... seize upon the things which the world agrees to consider desirable. The Christian majority would become the slaves of the unchristian minority, and would be at their mercy. Christianity, in so far as it is a social system at all, is the purest kind of socialism, a socialism not of compulsion but of disinterestedness. It is easy, of course, to scoff at the possibility of so far disintegrating the vast and complex organisation of society, as to arrange ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... audience of country-gentlemen, represented a genuine belief.[6] The country-gentlemen formed the class to which not only the constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country gave the lead in politics as in the whole social system. Even reformers proposed to improve the House of Commons chiefly by increasing the number of county-members, and a county-member was almost necessarily a country-gentleman of an exalted kind. Although the country-gentleman was very far from having all things ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... coalheavers; but if a merchant accumulates wealth and works his way to a baronetcy, or if the son of a greengrocer becomes a lord chancellor, or an archbishop, or, as a successful soldier, wins a peerage, all the world admires them; and looks with pride upon the social system which renders such achievements possible. Nobody suggests that there is anything wrong in their being discontented with their station; or that, in their cases society suffers by men of ability reaching the positions for which ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... appalling depths of character. He seemed to delight in scourging the upper classes of society with the lash of his tongue, to take pleasure in convicting it of inconsistency, in mocking at law and order with some grim jest worthy of Juvenal, as if some grudge against the social system rankled in him, as if there were some mystery carefully hidden ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... however unrecognized, in the cloud of witnesses that encompass us round about, and whose presence is less vividly felt in the gleam and glitter of ceremonial society. The more general assemblages of clubs, teas, and receptions are so incorporated into the social system that no one could cancel these if he would, nor would he if he could. They have their uses. All exchange of human sympathies is good, even if it be somewhat superficial and spectacular. The more exclusive dinners are not without their special charm as occasions ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... life had received as yet no disturbing impulse from the stream of Mohammedan and European conquest. This Hindu Javanese literature tells us of a people far advanced in the essentials of civilization, and reveals the existence of a social system which, though undoubtedly primitive, was at the same time complete and homogeneous. From the date of the Mohammedan conquest onwards, that is to say, for the last four centuries, the national life ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... of those relations. If we think of society as an organism we instantly understand that so immense a change as this could not possibly have been effected without the co-operation of the other great parts of the social system, any more than a critical evolution could take place in the nutritive apparatus of an animal, without a change in the whole series of its organs. Thus in order that serfage should be evolved from slavery, and free ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... again in the late summer and the fall, he passed and repassed, and gave me chances to see his movements, and hear his orders to his bands, and so, little by little, opened my eyes to the fact that the crows, though a little people, are of great wit, a race of birds with a language and a social system that is wonderfully human in many of its chief points, and in some is better carried out ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... character of Camors, she still understood that, like the great majority of the young men of his day, the young Count was not overburdened with principle. But she held that one of the privileges of woman, in our social system, was the elevation of their husbands by connection with a pure soul, by family affections, and by the sweet religion of the heart. Seeking, therefore, by making her daughter an amiable and lovable woman, to prepare her for the high mission for which she was destined, she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... ramshackle train that goes to The Ghost and back in an hour and a half. We've all yearned to climb The Ghost, or as much of it as we dared. Now you two, with Mousey and a servant, are to go on the nine-thirty. I'll finish my destruction of the social system and catch the eleven o'clock train. We'll have picnic lunch. They say there's a dreadful cavern at the base of The Ghost that is corking for picnics, and then we'll explore until we ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... the text of the appeal that at the time the Council looked upon the Revolution as being primarily a political event, not as a movement to reconstruct the economic and social system. There is no reference to social democracy. Even the land question is not referred to. How limited their purpose was at the moment may be gathered from the statement, "The Council ... makes it its supreme task to organize the people's forces and their struggle for a final securing ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... he? whence does he come?" "You know him not; it lies with me to balance the debit and credit account in such cases as these; I know how much I owe to each man; I repay some after a long interval, others beforehand, according as my opportunities and the exigencies of my social system permit." I shall, therefore, sometimes bestow somewhat upon an ungrateful man, though not ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... Imperial or Royal Autocracy. He is the only writer who, in the face of the prevailing restrictions upon the press in France, dares to speak out his whole mind, and to preach the Age of Reason in Politics and in the Social System. He is full of new ideas, which should, we think, be very attractive to American readers; and it is, indeed, strange that his writings are so little read and reviewed on this side of the ocean. His ideas on general education, on the total extinction of authority ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... of human character; and therefore they are often painful,—just as Thackeray is painful,—because they look at artificial society, and paint what they see. Thus they dwell often on unhappy marriages, because such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about them; whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels, what is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... his eyes, feeling rather tired, thinking of Phineas. Of his last words as he passed him stretcher-borne in the trench. Of the devotion of the man. Of his future. Well, never mind his future. In all his vague post-war schemes for reorganization of the social system, Phineas had his place. No further need for dear old Phineas to stand in light green and gold outside a picture palace. He had thought it out long ago, although he had never said a word to Phineas. Now he could set the poor chap's mind at ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... claim that the political and social system that creates an aristocracy of leisure, and consequently of intellect, is the best possible kind of human organization; I perceive its disadvantages clearly enough. But I do not hold that a system under which all important public trusts, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... to-day to the most decisive date in the Revolution, the fall of the social system of historic France, and the substitution of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... "Bowl" (the Indian name of a beautiful small lake between Lenox and Stockbridge), among the Berkshire hills, where selfishness and moral cowardice and worldly expediency exist in each man's practice no doubt quite sufficiently; but where they are not yet universally recognized as a social system, by the laws of which civilized existence should be governed. You know, "a bad action is a thousand times preferable to a ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... despair of nihilism, the reckless immoralities of atheism, and the suicidal negations of agnosticism which have cursed liberally-educated Europe, if we are to have here in America an influence strong, binding and beneficient in our social system, as the result of collegiate education, it must be, it can be only by retaining in that system a clear faith in God, and by making prominent, as the highest aim of life, the service of God in serving the ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... we talked—talked; we discussed again and again the reasons for the war, the object of it, what we were going to do to Germany when it was over. Every evening we tried Germany over again, put her culture, commerce, social system on the rack, found her guilty and had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the case there must be something wrong with our social system. You may be sure that the female cat or canary bird is just as efficient in her department as the male in his. Speaking from my own experience among the London poor, I should say that the father is often a mere parasite ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... with, by what exact right do we call people like the Zulus savages? Setting aside the habit of polygamy, which, after all, is common among very highly civilised peoples in the East, they have a social system not unlike our own. They have, or had, their king, their nobles, and their commons. They have an ancient and elaborate law, and a system of morality in some ways as high as our own, and certainly more generally obeyed. They have their priests ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... few to enormous wealth and crush the many into a new serfdom worse than the old. For all these evils Russia has a cure; her autocracy saves her from the profitless wrangling of Parliaments; her national Church sums up the beliefs and traditions of nobles and peasants; and at the base of her social system she possesses in the "Mir" a patriarchal communism against which the forces of the West will beat in vain. Looking on the Greek Church as a necessary part of the national life, they sought to wield its powers for nationalising all the races of that motley ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... being willing carefully to investigate the results to which their own doctrines in logic led. They overestimated the extent to which men are willing to occupy themselves with political affairs. They made no proper allowance for the protective armour each social system must acquire by the mere force of prescription. Nor is there sufficient allowance in their attitude for those limiting conditions of circumstance of which every statesman must of necessity take account. They occupy themselves, that is to say, so completely with staatslehre that they do not ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... crass material endeavour," small wonder that the American had remained in spiritual poverty of the most debasing sort until the New Dawn should come to enrich him, to topple in ruins an exploiting social system. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... election of the governors, which tended to reconcile the up-country people. But the control of taxation, suffrage, and representation remained securely in the hands of the legislative majority of the low-country counties. Slavery and the allied social system were henceforth immune, and the distinctions, forms, and realities of a growing aristocracy made steady encroachments upon the life of the State until the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... large and small rooms occur together there is a fair presumption that the occupancy of the village extended over a period when hostile pressure was pronounced and when it became less strong. It has already been shown that, owing to the social system of the pueblo-builders, there is almost always growth in a village, although the population may remain stationary in numbers or even decrease; so that, until a village is abandoned it will follow the general ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... is intended by this statement. An aristocracy is in a manner the intellect of the social system, as the middle classes and the proletariat may be said to be its organizing and working power. It naturally follows that these forces are differently situated; and of their antagonism there is bred a seeming antipathy produced by the performance of different ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... seeds. The export of cotton jumped from 192,000 lbs. in 1791 to 6,000,000 lbs. in 1795. Slave labour had been found, or was believed, to be especially economical in cotton growing. Slavery therefore rapidly became the mainstay of wealth and of the social system in South Carolina and throughout the far South; and in a little while the baser sort of planters in Virginia discovered that breeding slaves to sell down South was a very ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... you another Note regarding William Blake, claiming for that humble individual the honour of being the pioneer in the establishment of charity-schools in Britain, from which department of our social system who can calculate the benefits accrued, and constantly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... The social system is in fact like the constitution of a human being. There are those who have capacity, a vocation, to conceive thoughts, and rule their brethren by intellectual power. Collectively of course they are the mind or brain, the mental element, in the social organism. There are those secondly, who have ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... The facts of nature will always be found too strong for the theories of the political economist; but our rulers in the plenitude of their wisdom thought otherwise; and began to search within the social system for a cause of that disorder, which was neither more nor less than an epidemic, as totally beyond the reach of their prevention as if the College of Physicians were to issue their solemn fiat—"This year there shall be neither ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... To care for imbeciles without increasing imbecility, and to care for criminals on the basis of the prevention and decrease of crime, are among the most vital questions of modern social life. As the conditions of human misery become more clearly revealed to humanity, and their evil effects on the social system become more apparent, greater efforts will be {452} put forward—greater than ever before—in the care of dependents, defectives, and delinquents. Not only must the pathology of the individual be studied, for the preservation of his physical system, but the pathology ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... Any social system founded on a theory designed for the elevation of one sex alone, regardless of the other, is altogether false and delusive to the expectations built upon it, for the human race is dual and heredity keeps the stock common from which both men and women ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... by epigraphy and numismatics; and though for many centuries still very infrequently, the precious remains of ancient monuments. But the original background is never effaced, for the whole religious and social system, the whole philosophic outlook upon the world of which I have sought to outline the long and laborious evolution through prehistoric ages, remained fundamentally immune against change until the advent of the British to India subjected them to ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... house. But they would not say aloud: "Suppose they came here! How terrible!" They would not even whisper the slightest apprehension. They just briefly discussed the matter with a fine air of indifferent aloofness, remaining calm while the brick walls and the social system which defended that bright and delicate parlour from the dark, savage universe without seemed to ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... desire to return to his mother country. When the financial fortune of The Nation was doubtful, he wrote to Norton that he should not go back to England except as a "last extremity. It would be going back into an atmosphere that I detest, and a social system that I have hated since I was fourteen years old."[194] In 1889, after an absence of twenty-seven years, he went to England. The best intellectual society of London and Oxford opened its doors to him and he fell under its charm as ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Under the present social system, all bonds of union among the inhabitants of the same street or neighbourhood have been dissolved. In the richer parts of the large towns, people live without knowing who are their next-door neighbours. But in the crowded lanes people know each other perfectly, and are continually brought ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with the safety of the State." (Croker Papers, i. 12.) Croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and persecutions." "There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... wading through slaughter to a universal throne, and no effectual resistance had as yet been offered to a progress which menaced the liberty of Europe and the existence of its States. At home, a crazy king and a profligate heir-apparent presided over a social system in which all civil evils were harmoniously combined. A despotic administration was supported by a parliamentary representation as corrupt as illusory; a church, in which spiritual religion was all but extinct, had sold herself as a bondslave to the governing classes. Rank ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... years to come, practical, if Utopian. Slow and sure successes of science and art, where his brain could work, helpful and growing. Far off, yet surely to come,—surely for him,—a day to come when a pure social system should be universal, should have thrust out its fibres of light knitting into one the nations of the earth, when the lowest slave should find its true place and rightful work, and stand up, knowing itself divine. "To insure to every man the freest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... existence. Leisure for the grand duties which devolve on the lords of mankind. It doesn't seem to strike Xenophon that this rigid system of self-absorption in the higher selfhood of the social system might be destructive of individual life. Of course he would say, "No, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... a social system based on the old sex taboos under the new conditions is obvious. There must be a revaluation of woman on the basis of her mental and economic capacity instead of on the manner in which she fits into a system of institutional taboos. ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... be well understood," says Jacolliot, "that it was but sacerdotal influence and Brahminical decay that, in changing the primitive condition of the East, reduced woman to a state of subordination which has not yet disappeared from our social system. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... means of the efforts of German artists alone. It is comical, and, I say, very like lunacy. Mr. Ernest Newman will have it that Wagner's was only a very mediocre intellect. The cold truth is that only a mighty intellect, gone wrong on one point, could have evolved the idea of such a new social system. For, mark you, Wagner propounded no scheme for the regeneration of humanity: he assumed that it could regenerate itself by wishing, or willing, and that then the thousand years of peace would ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... with the society to which it belongs. I need scarcely add that this calamity is slavery. Christianity suppressed slavery, but the Christians of the sixteenth century re-established it—as an exception, indeed, to their social system, and restricted to one of the races of mankind; but the wound thus inflicted upon humanity, though less extensive, was at the same time rendered far more difficult ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... associations whose existence is avowed may combine for selfish ends, and in derogation of the common rights of the social system. They may defend their members, to the injury of justice, in our courts. They may interfere with the management of churches and societies. They may bring an influence of intimidation to bear on public men. They may disseminate ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher

... of life more keenly when he had been able to enjoy their worth. So many simple joys missed!—so many gracious and helpful sentiments discarded!—all the best of his years given over to eager pursuit of gold,—not because he cared for gold really, but because, owing to a false social system which perverted the moral sense, it seemed necessary to happiness. Yet he had proved it to be the very last thing that could make a man happy. The more money, the less enjoyment of it—the greater the wealth, the less the content. Was ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... Resentful Employee provides the emotional impulse of the resisting pacifist, whose horizon is bounded by his one passionate desire that the particular social system that has treated him so ill should collapse and give in, and its leaders and rulers be humiliated and destroyed, the intellectual direction of a mischievous pacifism comes from ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... regarding that barrel of his on the previous morning in the studio upstairs. J. B. Wheeler had wanted quick results, and he had got them. Archie had long since ceased to regard J. B. Wheeler as anything but a tumour on the social system, but he was bound to admit that he had certainly done him a good turn now. Already these honest men, diverted by the superior attraction of this latest happening, appeared to have ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... should be such tragedies? Should not that glance be given? Why should that tone be checked? Why should one be mute when a single word might, would, avert the tragedy? Is it not possible, Auntie, that there is something wrong in our social system when such things can happen; and can happen ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... talked of my prospects with handsome Leslie Wheeler—his was his father's face, unblemished and unworn—our conversation was always three parts jocular, at all events upon his side. I was to recast society and mould our social system anew by means of my pen, and of journalism. I was to provide "the poor blessed poor" with hot-buttered rolls and devilled kidneys for breakfast, said Leslie, and introduce old-age pensions for every British workman who ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... social system, not a creed, A Hindoo may believe, or disbelieve, what speculative doctrine he chooses, but he must not eat, drink, or marry, save in accordance with the custom of his caste. Compare Asoka on toleration; 'The sects of other people all ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... from small environments into lands that are very deadly. But this is natural enough; for they are not fleeing from death. They are fleeing from life. And this principle applies to ring within ring of the social system of humanity. It is perfectly reasonable that men should seek for some particular variety of the human type, so long as they are seeking for that variety of the human type, and not for mere human variety. It is quite proper that a British diplomatist ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... where the stream has not its legitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole being, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in the social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence, in all wise monarchies,—nay, in all well-constituted states,—the peculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and every science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and thoughtful ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of the evils incident to a republican form of government," said the major pompously. "For my part, I prefer the English social system, where the gentry are ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... has no power to create the highest kind of leadership. In other words, he is not a great man. The world's reformers have been of another temper and mettle. He is no Mazzini, no Luther. George Eliot's social theories loft no room for such men. They were superfluous in her social system. The man not to be explained by heredity and tradition had no place in her books; and no genius, no great man, can ever be explained by heredity ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... hiding in Mediterranean villas or in yachts on the Dalmatian coast—are very curious people. The very nature of their mode of existence makes them monsters of selfishness. They are the logical outcome of our predatory social system. They are like the insects which we are told will some day triumph over other forms of life. At least, I think of them as such when I encounter them rushing thither and yon over the face of the earth, crawling up mountains and flying through the air, their shiny wing-cases ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... "The social system may thus be summed up, as I think: the masters wish to profit by the workmen, who in their turn desire to be paid as much as possible for as little work as possible. Well, then, there is ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... Since that wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts—for those it was easy to arrange—but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Iroquois were under the observation of our own people two hundred years before the discovery was made in reference to them. "The existence among them of clans, named after animals, was pointed out at an early day, but without suspecting that it was the unit of a social system upon which both the tribe and the confederacy rested." But, being ignorant of this fact, it is not singular that they made serious mistakes in their description ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... siding with Gaddo, and promising a more amicable deportment for the future towards the other lights of the harem, the matter was arranged, and Gaddo recited the Mahometan profession of faith, and became the Emir's son-in-law. The execrable social system under which he had hitherto lived thus vanished like a nightmare from an awakened sleeper. Wedded to one who had saved his life by her compassion, and whose life he had in turn saved by his change of creed, adoring her and adored by her, with the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... individual. "This," he added, with that characteristic touch which made him kin to all oppressed people, "is rather comforting in view of the sufferings of so many infants needlessly sacrificed through the terrible defects of our vicious social system." ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... recreational or cultural or religious. There is a blending of interests and of functions in such an organization as the grange or the church, as there is in one individual or group a variety of interests and activities. The whole social system is complex, interwoven with a multitude of separate strands of personal desires and prejudices, group clannishness and conservatism, rival institutions developing friction and continually compelled to find new adjustments. Society in constantly in motion like the sea, its units ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... an instinctive need for an audience, she took with her a certain Miss Garradice, one of those mute, emotional nervous spinsters who drift detachedly, with quick sudden movements, glittering eyeglasses, and a pent-up imminent look, about our social system. There is something about this type of womanhood—it is hard to say—almost as though they were the bottled souls of departed buccaneers grown somehow virginal. She came with Lady Beach-Mandarin quietly, almost humorously, and yet it was as if the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... pauses not for a moment to spare—to pity—to look aside, but rushes forward for ever, impassive as the marble in the quarry—caring not for whom it destroys, for the how many, or for the results, direct and indirect, whether many or few. The increasing grandeur and magnitude of the social system, the more it multiplies and extends its victims, the more it conceals them; and for the very same reason: just as in the Roman amphitheatres, when they grew to the magnitude of mighty cities, (in some instances accommodating ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... admired, one whose very words he had come to cherish. And possibly it was not all her own fault that Carolina Langdon had enlisted her services, subtle and quite overwhelming (owing to Haines' fervent worship of her), against the secretary. Perhaps the social system of which she had become a part in Washington had something to do with the craving to become a leader in that fascinating world whose dazzling variety and infinite diversion seemed to fill her soul with ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... thoroughgoing admirer of Dickens that you are moved to compassion when you think of the much he loses by 'being constitutionally incapable' of perfect apprehension. 'How poor,' he cries, with generous enthusiasm, 'the world of fancy would be, "how dispeopled of her dreams," if, in some ruin of the social system, the books of Dickens were lost; and if The Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Mr. Crinkle and Miss Squeers and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and Dick Swiveller were to perish, or to vanish with Menander's men and women! We cannot think of our world without them; and, children of ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... require special dress; it is informal; it is soon over, and may be made light or heavy, as one chooses. The afternoon tea is almost a necessity in London life. It is considered useful as "a pick me up," and it serves an admirable purpose in the social system. It costs the household hardly any trouble or expense. It brings people together in the easiest possible way, for ten minutes or an hour, just as their engagements or fancies may settle it. A cup of tea at the right moment does for the virtuous reveller all that Falstaff claims ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... requiring for their production not merely the highest aptitudes of numberless generations, but likewise an extraordinary combination of circumstances. Secondly, this period is all-important because it saw the first complete integration of the ancient social system,—the definitive union of all the clan-lordships under a central military government. And lastly, the period is of special interest because the incident of the first attempt to christianize Japan—the story of ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... that the government at this time seriously meditated a blow which would have reduced many thousands of families to beggary, and would have disturbed the whole social system of every part of the country. No wine, beer, or coffee could be sold without a license. It was rumoured that every person holding such a license would shortly be required to enter into the same engagements which had been imposed on public functionaries, or to relinquish his trade. [354] It seems ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... (That social system—however varying in different times and places—in which ownership of land is the basis of authority is known in history as feudalism. From the time of Clovis, the Frankish King, who died in A.D. 511, the progress of the Franks in civilization ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... I have considered the organization of the American aborigines in gentes, phratries, and tribes, with the functions of each in their social system. From the importance of this organization to a right understanding of their social and governmental life, a recapitulation of the principal features of each member of the organic series is necessary in this connection. [Footnote: ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... edifice brought about by a more careful and intelligent ethnological study. I refer to the political equality of man, and to that race absorption to which I have alluded,—that belief that any foreign element introduced into the American social system and body politic would speedily be absorbed therein, and in a brief space thoroughly assimilated. In this all-important respect I do not hesitate to say we theorists and abstractionists of the North, throughout that long anti-slavery discussion which ended with the 1861 clash ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... are comparative degrees of captivity, and comparative degrees of slavery; but of liberty, our social system knows nothing but the name. That sentry, if you asked him, would tell you that he is free. He pities me, perhaps, for being a prisoner. Yet he is even less free than myself. He is the slave of discipline. He must walk, hold up his head, ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards

... benefits of a long peace, the west of Europe finds itself at this moment suddenly given over to perturbations which threaten with ruin and overthrow all legal powers and the whole social system. Insurrection and anarchy, the offspring of France, soon crossed the German frontier, and have spread themselves in every direction with an audacity which has gained new force in proportion to the concessions of the governments. This devastating ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... well-developed market economy with a sizable - but falling - proportion of nationalized industry, an extensive social system, and a high standard of living. Austria's economy is closely integrated with Germany and other EU members - Austria joined the EU on 1 January 1995. Since the early 1980s, the Austrian economy has experienced stable growth. Following a mild recession in 1993, Austria's ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... doubt that humanity belongs to a class of life which to a large extent determines its own destinies, establishes its own rules of education and conduct, and thus influences every step we are free to take within the structure of our social system. But the power of human beings to determine their own destinies is limited by natural law, Nature's law. It is the counsel of wisdom to discover the laws of nature, including the laws of human nature, and then to live in accordance with them. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... difficult to illustrate what might be accomplished by reducing to action the ardor of those youths who so bitterly arraign our present industrial order. While no part of the social system can be changed rapidly, we would all admit that the present industrial arrangements in America might be vastly improved and that we are failing to meet the requirements of our industrial life with courage and success simply because we do not realize that unless ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... law of custom, ought my weary pen to fall flat and refuse its office; for it is here that the fate of every heroine culminates. For what are women born but to be married? Old maids are excrescences in the social system,—disagreeable utilities,—persons who have failed to fulfil their destiny,—and of whom it should have been said, rather than of ghosts, that they are always in the wrong. But life, with pertinacious facts, is too apt to transcend custom and the usage of novel-writers; and though the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... taken into account, it is excluded, it's not supposed to exist! They don't recognise that humanity, developing by a historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! That's why they instinctively dislike history, 'nothing but ugliness and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton, although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her pulpits on the following Sunday. Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have. The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea to prey upon a youthful and vigorous ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from the development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not the immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure, a superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power of mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the basis of all law and the cement of every social system among men and women, without which it would go to pieces.... Sufficient power of self-control should be the essence ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... whole makes life possible, is parcelled out for each. Not one of us is supposed to know of those vital things outside our own narrow field. That knowledge is forbidden us lest we should understand the workings of our social system and question the wisdom of it all. And so, while each is wiser in his own little cell than were the men of the old order, yet on all things else we are little children, accepting what we are taught, doing what we are told, with no mind, no ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... prior to the Dorian conquest presented in the Herakleid legend; the tale of Troy itself remaining the common heritage of the Greek peoples, and having an actual basis in historical fact. The events, however, are of less importance than the picture of an actual historical, political, and social system, corresponding, not to the supposed date of the Trojan war, but to the date of the composition of the Homeric poems. Later ages regarded the myths themselves with a good deal of scepticism, and were often disposed to rationalise them, or to find for them an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Moulton Barrett, had been a landowner in the West Indies, and thus, by a somewhat curious coincidence, had borne a part in the same social system which stung Browning's father into revolt and renunciation. The parts played by Edward Barrett, however, though little or nothing is known of it, was probably very different. He was a man Conservative by nature, a believer in authority in the nation and the family, and endowed with ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... founder of modern German socialism was Karl Marx,(150) and almost the only Socialist who pretended to economic knowledge. He aimed his attack on the present social system against the question of value, by asserting that the amount of labor necessary for the production of an article is the sole measure of its exchange value. It follows from this that the right of property in the article vests wholly in the laborer, while the capitalist, if he claims a share ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... considerable; differences in governmental theories and institutions were seemingly irreconcilable. In Sweden the tone of the political system, until far in the nineteenth century, was distinctly autocratic, and that of the social system aristocratic; in Norway the principle that preponderated was rather that of democracy. Between the two states there was disagreement upon even the fundamental question of the nature of the union. The Swedish contention was ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... much, work as well as possible. This is not high theory, but I believe it is sound practice, good to put into execution while philosophers and legislators ponder over the better ordering of the social system. At the same time, I conceive that when patience has done its utmost and industry its best, whether in the case of women or operatives, and when both are baffled, and pain and want triumph, the sufferer is free, is entitled, at last ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... relation of landlord and tenant, which should excite a prejudice against the landlord; on the contrary, many landlords have been a blessing to the communities in which they lived; but our land system is a conspicuous part of a grandly false social system based on pure selfishness, which makes all men jealous competitors, and destroys the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... a truant she tramped back toward the city, pausing to observe anything that chanced to catch her eye. At the moment of her discovery of the difference between her and most girls there had begun a cleavage between her and the social system. And now she felt as if she were of one race and the rest of the world of another and hostile race. She did not realize it, but she had taken the first great step along the path that leads to distinction or destruction. For the world either ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... that the design of this play, whatever it may be, is one deep enough to go down to that place in the social system which Tom o' Bedlam was then peacefully occupying,—thinking of anything else in the world but a social revolution on his behalf—to bring him up for observation; and that it is high enough to go up to that apex of the social structure ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... country some thirty-five years ago against slavery in our colonies, we may recollect that Clarkson and Wilberforce were denounced as fanatics, and had to encounter much opprobrium; but it must not be forgotten that, so far as regards the entwining of the roots of slavery into the social system, in the opinions and interests of mankind, there was no comparison whatever between the circumstances of that contest here and those which attended it in America. (Hear, hear.) The number of persons who in this country were ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... the domestic occupation of women in the rural districts in olden times; and it may perhaps be questioned whether the revolution in our social system, which has taken out of their hands so many branches of household manufacture and useful domestic employment, be an altogether ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... like, if they can't furnish pork-butchers' reasons for sundering; because the man makes the money in this country.—My goodness! what a funny people, sir!—It 's our way of holding the balance, ma'am.—But would it not be better to rectify the law and the social system, dear sir?—Why, ma'am, we find it comfortabler to take cases as they come, in the style of our fathers.—But don't you see, my good man, that you are offering scapegoats for the comfort of the majority?—Well, ma'am, there always were scapegoats, and always will be; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... silent nights, under purple heavens and white stars. And he was to have her all to himself, with no one near to interrupt, no other friends, even, and no possible rival. She was not guarded now by a complex social system, with its responsibilities. He was the most lucky of men. Others had only seen her in her drawing-room or in an opera-box, but he was free to ford mountain-streams at her side, or ride with her under arches of the great palms, or to play a ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... barony was replaced by a wealth that might buy real titles. But the crime still lived, and woe to Mark Bower, the financial magnate, if it was brought home to him! He had not risen above his fellows without making enemies. He well knew the weakness and the strength of the British social system, with its strange complacency, its "allowances," its hysterical prudery, its queer amalgam of Puritanism and light hearted forbearance. He might gamble with loaded dice in the City, and people would applaud him as ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... love to be humbugged long since passed into proverb. Humbuggery may be called our national vice, our besetting sin. Like liberty, it appears to be in the very air we breathe, and we take to it as naturally as we go into politics. Our entire social system has become saturated with it. It is the main-spring of many acts we loudly praise, the lode-star of men we apotheosize, is oftimes the warp and woof even of the mantle of charity, which, like a well-filled purse—or a tariff compromise—covers ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... one may say to me;—"How comes it that millions of men thus allow the Rothschilds and the Mackays to appropriate the fruit of their labour?" Alas, they cannot help themselves under the existing social system! But let us picture to our minds a city all of whose inhabitants find their lodging, clothing, food and occupation secured to them, on condition of producing things useful to the community, and let us suppose a Rothschild to enter this city bringing with him a cask full of gold. ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin

... universal bond of brotherhood, not only in Boston, but throughout this land. They harmonize with our sharp, wide-awake spirit. They are an element in our politics. Our statesmen, legislators, and high-placed men, generally, are weaned on them. Why, dear me! oysters are a fundamental idea in our social system. The best society circles around 'fried' and 'stewed.' Our 'festive scenes,' you know, depend on them in no small degree for their zest. That isn't all, either. A full third of our population is over 'oysters' every morning at eleven o'clock. Young Smith, on his way down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... to approach him, to show him too that they were the real thing; but he looked at them across the big room, as if they were miles away: they were a compendium of everything he most objected to in the social system of his country. Such people as that, all convention and patent- leather, with ejaculations that stopped conversation, had no business in a studio. A studio was a place to learn to see, and how could you see through ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... and the rights of man, this continual solecism in a government of freedom, why is it not met as a necessity, incurable and inevitable, and formally and distinctly recognized as a settled part of our social system? State necessity, that imperial tyrant, seeks no disguise. In the language of Sheridan, "What he does, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification than the great motives which placed the iron ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the Barber's stomach be filled? The pious feeling which prompts this question lies deep in the heart of Hindoo society. We do not understand it. How can we, with our cold-blooded creed of demand and supply, free trade and competition, fair field and no favour? In this ancient land, whose social system is not a deformed growth, but a finished structure, nothing has been left to chance, least of all a man's beard; for, cleanliness and godliness not being neighbours here, a beard well matted with ashes and grease is the outward ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... social problem, there was a "human problem," and that in trying to solve this America had been less successful—indeed, very unsuccessful. The "human problem" was the problem of civilization, and civilization meant "humanization in society"—the development of the best in man, in and by a social system. And here he pronounced America defective. America generally—life, people, possessions—was not "interesting." Americans lived willingly in places called by such names as Briggsville, Jacksonville and Marcellus. ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... political evolution of mankind. The French Revolution stood midway between two spheres of history, the sphere of medieval barbarism and that of modern enlightenment. It exploded like a bomb in the midst of the self-satisfied aristocracy of the earlier social system and rent it into the fragments which no hand could put together again. In this sense the career of Napoleon seems providential. The era of popular government had replaced that of autocratic and aristocratic government in France, and the armies of Napoleon spread ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... agreed to pay, and which he is told makes sugar and tea so shamefully dear. No. I tell you what does a little counteract those eloquent incentives to break his own head against the strong walls of the Social System—it is, that he has two eyes in that head, which are not always employed in reading. And, having been told in print that masters are tyrants, parsons hypocrites or drones in the hive, and land-owners vampires and bloodsuckers, he looks out into the little ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... the evils of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity. Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... tavern is the drone. It has no boys to put to school, no neighbours to study, and is therefore a little more refined, or, should I say? depraved, in its taste. The villa in one form or other has always existed, and always will exist so long as our present social system holds together. It is the basis of life, and more important than the tavern. Agreed: but that does not say that the tavern was not an excellent corrective influence to the villa, and that its disappearance has not had a vulgarising effect on artistic ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... consultation with a distinguished barrister, and, moreover, was pleased at the prospect of leaving this island of fogs for the sunny shores of France. The times were exciting; the country, on the verge of proposed electoral reforms. But in France the new social system had sprung into existence and—lamentable fact!—duty towards one's country had assumed an empire superior to ancient ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... detesting our brethren as usual. It only shows that the milder type of the disease has penetrated the system, which will thus be enabled to out-Jenneral its more dangerous congener. Before long we shall have physicians of our ailing social system writing to the "Weekly Brandreth's Pill" somewhat on this wise:—"I have a very marked and hopeful case in Pequawgus Four Corners. Miss Hepzibah Tarbell, daughter of that archenemy of his kind, Deacon Joash T., attended only one of my lectures. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... one[76] who knew them well, "to acquire land from the Indians, to organize a social system, to introduce municipal regulations, or to establish military defences; but cheerfully obeyed the priests and the king's officers, and enjoyed the present without troubling their heads about the future. They seem to have been even careless as to the acquisition ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... as now, was the centre of the social system, and required powerful safe-guards. "Honor thy father and thy mother," stands at the head of those commands which prescribe the duties of man to man; and, throughout the Bible, the parental relation is God's favorite illustration, of his own relations to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... and therefore the high contracting powers. Sons as well as daughters are subject to this will until after marriage. It is a custom strong as statute law. If inclination coincide with parental desire, well and good; if not, a social system which rears young orphan girls to feed the insatiate lust of Paris winks at the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... has swept through the West and across the planet in the past two generations has made drastic social change a matter of the utmost urgency. The only open questions concern the direction of the changes, their rapidity, and the success of the social system in adapting itself to the shattering effects of newly ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... ages there has been pity for the blind, the lame, the deformed, never was pity so general, or so ardent as in the nineteenth century, but it always existed for the poor of spirit and the feeble of body, and these are not the victims of our social system; they are nature's victims.' Mildred did not answer, and they heard the fiddles, the piano, ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... the rising sun, with the islands of the West, and the unfathomed depths of the mysterious Scandinavia. He was the universal guardian of the public and private interests which composed the great edifice of the social system as then existing amongst his subjects. Above all, and out of his own private purse, he supported the heraldries of his dominions—the peerage, senatorial or praetorian, and the great gentry or chivalry ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... conversation with her about the negroes and all the details of their condition. She is a kind-hearted, intelligent woman; but though she seemed to me to acquiesce, as a matter of inevitable necessity, in the social system in the midst of which she was born and lives, she did not appear to me, by several things she said, to be by any means in love with it. She gave me a very sad character of Mr. K——, confirming by her general description of him the impression produced ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... North Korea (DPRK), under its founder President KIM Il-so'ng, adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against excessive Soviet or Communist Chinese influence. The DPRK demonized the US as the ultimate threat to its social system through state-funded propaganda, and molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological objective of eventual unification of Korea under Pyongyang's control. KIM's son, the current ruler KIM Jong Il, was officially designated as his father's successor ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... predecessors. A gloomy reserve, and a sort of uncertain foreboding, have taken possession of every body—no one ventures to communicate his thoughts, even to his nearest friend—relations avoid each other—and the whole social system seems on the point of being dissolved. Those who have yet preserved their freedom take the longest circuit, rather than pass a republican Bastille; or, if obliged by necessity to approach one, it is with downcast or averted looks, which bespeak their ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... not one of those persons who believe that there is nothing the matter with America; that you are not wholly content with existing conditions. You would scarcely be interested in Socialism unless you were convinced that in our existing social system there are many evils for which some remedy ought to be found if possible. Your interest in Socialism arises from the fact that its advocates claim that it is a remedy for the social evils which ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... Spain, Gaul, Britain, Syria, and Egypt, maintained himself, as in the present day, by his own labor and that of his household, without possessing a single slave." The latter part of my note was intended to suggest this consideration. Yet so completely was slavery rooted in the social system, both in the east and the west, that in the great diffusion of wealth at this time, every one, I doubt not, who could afford a domestic slave, kept one; and generally, the number of slaves was in proportion to the wealth. I do not believe ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... in constructive capacity. During the first French revolution it successfully destroyed the old social system; but its attempts to reorganise society were retrogressive. Instead of Catholicism it proposed polytheism; and in the name of virtue and simplicity it condemned industry and art. Even science was condemned as aristocracy of knowledge. Nor can these ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... "Man falling—stand from under!" was the cry—how familiar it is!—and acquaintances and friends fled in mad skedaddle. He would surely be asking favors—would be trying to borrow money. It is no peculiarity of rats to desert a sinking ship; it is simply an inevitable precaution in a social system modeled as yet upon nature's cruel law of the survival of the fittest. A falling man is first of all a warning to all other men high enough up to be able to fall—a warning to them to take care lest they ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... Franconia is differently situated; yet she can only take advantage of circumstances which yet depend upon the caprice of a subtle-minded husband. Over both these friends of the unfortunate, slavery has stretched its giant arms, confusing the social system, uprooting the integrity of men, weakening respect for law, violating the best precepts of nature, substituting passion for principle, confounding reason, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... tyranny. Duly graduating in corruption, the leaders of the mob become the oppressors of the people. Cultivation of intellect and diffusion of knowledge may make the English nation more sensible of the benefits of their social system, and better qualified to discharge the duties with which their institutions have invested them, but they will never render them competent to preserve their liberties without the aid of these institutions. Let us for a moment ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... the means by which they are brought about, are mysterious and inscrutable. John Dounce had led this life for twenty years and upwards, without wish for change, or care for variety, when his whole social system was suddenly upset and turned completely topsy-turvy—not by an earthquake, or some other dreadful convulsion of nature, as the reader would be inclined to suppose, but by the simple agency of an ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... passion, egotism, which renders celibates either useless or mischievous. We live at a period when the defect of governments is to make Man for Society rather than Society for Man. There is a perpetual struggle going on between the Individual and the Social system which insists on using him, while he is endeavoring to use it to his own profit; whereas, in former days, man, really more free, was also more loyal to the public weal. The round in which men struggle in these days has been insensibly widened; the soul which ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... come to this country," Owen said in his opening words at New Harmony, "to introduce an entire new state of society, to change it from the ignorant, selfish system to an enlightened social system, which shall gradually unite all interests into one, and remove all causes for contests between individuals."[19] But the germs of dissolution were already present in the extreme individuality of the members of this new society. ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... men, saw all this in a flash without any pondering and turning over and reflecting and comparing, and he said to himself under his breath, not eloquently, but well, as there came home to him the heinousness of that abhorrant social system dependent upon the religious system of the Prophet of Mecca, "Damn the emir and Mohammed and the whole damned Mohammedan business, kit ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... especially in the old society of Washington, which takes its traditions from Washington's time or even the pre-Revolutionary period. For such society a self-made man was impossible. Such are the remarkable, indeed astounding, ramifications of the social system of a people who cry to heaven of their democracy. "Americans are all equal—this is one of the gems in our diadem." This epigram I heard drop from the lips of a senator who was the recognized aristocrat of the ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... paid, and all the rest was mortgage and loan from him. Even the housekeeping bills for the year before had not been fully settled. (It seemed that one had merely to live with a false appearance of prosperity to secure easy credit, in a social system that compels only the very poor ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... knowledge to the mass of the people. Our common schools are important in the same way as the common air, the common sunshine, the common rain,—invaluable for their commonness. They are the corner-stone of that municipal organization which is the characteristic feature of our social system; they are the fountain of that widespread intelligence which, like a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... quality. Our best civilizations are badly mottled with stains of barbarism. In no state or city can egotism, either of the hot-blooded or cold-blooded kind,—and the latter is far the more virulent,—be far to seek. On the other hand, no social system, thank God, can quite reverse the better instincts of humanity; and it may be freely granted that even American slavery shades off, here and there, into quite tender modifications. Yet not in all the world could there possibly be found an antagonism so deep and intense as exists here. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... his caste, he is a total abstainer, being a Bhundaree, whose function is to draw toddy, not to drink it. This is one of those profound institutes by which the wisdom of the ancients fenced the whole social system ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... lasts, be a necessary part of the experience of humanity; therefore men and women properly have a joint heritage in its exactions and its privileges. But government is a passing phase in the evolution of the social system: when men are perfected, it will vanish in spontaneous obedience. War or crude violence universally governed in the primitive society. Little by little, this barbaric reign of force was encroached upon and superseded by politics, the forms of statesmanship ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... heresy. The noblest and most saintly among clergy and laity alike were often the fiercest persecutors. Church and State were closely intermingled; heresy was a crime as well as a sin; the heretic was a rebel; mild measures only made him bolder; and in fear of the overthrow of the whole social system the rulers of State and ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley



Words linked to "Social system" :   scheme, feudalism, form of government, matriarchate, class structure, society, social organization, feudal system, patriarchate, structure, meritocracy, segregation, matriarchy, pluralism, separatism, patriarchy, political system, system, social organisation, social structure



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