I believe that, despite the fact that it is so dramatic and so beautiful and so inspiring and so stimulating, we will ultimately not be judged by our technology, we won't be judged by our design, we won't be judged by our intellect and reason. Ultimately, you judge the character of a society, not by how they treat their rich and the powerful and the privileged, but by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Because it's in that nexus that we actually begin to understand truly profound things about who we are.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

After all, are we not measured by the way in which we treat the most vulnerable members of our society?

A country or culture can be best judged by how it treats its minorities

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

What have we done to deserve a man who slept with 2,000 women telling us what to think about politics, and a man who addresses the nation through his teddy telling us what to think about class?
Some people say judge a society by the way it treats its women. Others say judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners. I say judge a society on the people it offers as its greatest thinkers.
Our society’s leading public intellectual has admitted mistreating women and is famous for sticking a Barbie up his bottom on stage, so make what you will of that.

The strength of a society is measured not by the wealth of its most affluent members, but by how well its most vulnerable citizens are able to cope. The question we need to ask is whether everyone has the chance to lead a life of dignity.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.

the measure of society is how it treats the weakest members

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.

Society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.

The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members