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Quotes by Sociologist
"At the heart of pornography is sexuality haunted by its own disappearance."
87
"A healthy degree of party unity among Democrats and Republicans has deteriorated into bitter partisan warfare."
61
"Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either."
53
"The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society."
46
"The order of the world is always right - such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin."
46
"All theory of modernity in sociology suggests that the more modernity there is, the less religion. In my theory we can realize that this is wrong: atheism is only one belief system among many."
43
"I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization."
43
"Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it."
42
"One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism."
39
"Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools and yesterday's concepts."
36
"Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination."
36
"The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life."
31
"As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes."
31
"Money is a poor man's credit card."
30
"A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life."
30
"In every school, more boys wanted to be remembered as a star athlete than as a brilliant student."
30
"There exists, between people in love, a kind of capital held by each. This is not just a stock of affects or pleasure, but also the possibility of playing double or quits with the share you hold in the other's heart."
30
"The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it."
28
"Practice has a logic which is not that of the logician."
28
"We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us."
28
"Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble."
28
"For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness."
27
"Verbal and nonverbal activity is a unified whole, and theory and methodology should be organized or created to treat it as such."
27
"Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity."
27
"The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need for words, and ask no more than complicitous silence."
27
"Prestige is the shadow of money and power."
27
"One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with."
27
"Collectively, we are in thrall to media - because they deliver to us many of the psychic goods we crave, and we know no other way to live."
26
"A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy."
25
"Work is the best of narcotics, providing the patient be strong enough to take it. I dread idleness as if it were Hell."
25
"Seduction is always more singular and sublime than sex and it commands the higher price."
25
"Germany expected that at the most a day or so would see Belgian resistance broken and the dash on Paris begun. It was not safe to start such a forward rush with Belgium unconquered."
24
"Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet."
24
"And the big question for the West, of course, and to the Europeans is, what other countries, which were formerly part of the Soviet bloc, should be incorporated into western institutions?"
24
"Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements."
24
"There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to "Americanize" him."
23
"We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror."
23
"Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves."
23
"The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment."
23
"So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids."
23
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us."
23
"The point of cities is multiplicity of choice."
22
"Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends."
22
"The world has become so complex that the idea of a power in which everything comes together and can be controlled in a centralized way is now erroneous."
22
"The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture."
21
"Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God."
21
"Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise."
21
"Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval."
21
"The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse."
21
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