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Quotes by Sociologist
"The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture."
46
"Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise."
46
"To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change."
46
"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."
45
"For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction."
45
"With Germany herself falling, it is not strange that the nations leagued with her also went down to defeat."
45
"The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil."
45
"The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist."
45
"The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse."
45
"A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy."
45
"But then I came to the conclusion that no, while there may be an immigration problem, it isn't really a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimilation."
44
"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."
44
"A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius."
44
"The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy."
44
"Human inertia makes the everyday environment, the furniture, as it were, appear to be a given."
44
"As I write at the end, if we step back and face the enormity of the torrent, then we have taken the first step to imagining what we might want to do about it."
44
"When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear."
44
"So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids."
44
"Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet."
44
"Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release."
44
"The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare."
44
"Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power."
44
"Sentimentality about nature denatures everything it touches."
44
"Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor."
43
"The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life."
43
"When they come to Europe, they are confronted by still closed borders. Thus, the concept of open borders is a very selective concept, one that is not taken seriously at all in the experience of non-Europeans."
43
"School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them."
43
"When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him."
43
"Europe itself is an embodiment of this diversity."
43
"Finally, in my critique of the immigration image of America, it is also important to know that we're not only a nation of immigrants, but we are in some part a nation of emigrants, which often gets neglected."
43
"Initially, the horrific images of September 11th triggered an enormous wave of solidarity."
43
"There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served."
42
"It is in games that many men discover their paradise."
42
"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."
42
"Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment."
42
"With acknowledgement of residues, we can be more easily prepared to grant the unit of science, the overlapping of disciplines, and the total coherence of all facts."
42
"Some people think that as the Chinese economy becomes more and more capitalistic it will inevitably become more democratic."
42
"Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God."
42
"And therefore we must seek dialogue in this networked world. We must ask which voice was actually attempting to make itself heard and saw no other possibility of gaining a hearing. To that extent, for a while this also represented a forced opening of a cosmopolitan view."
42
"Sure, I've often been misrepresented - anyone frequently quoted has this experience."
42
"Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness."
42
"The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation."
41
"We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself."
41
"We do not yet have the solutions to these questions, but the awareness that we live in an endangered world is present in more and more life situations."
41
"Leadership does not depend on being right."
40
"You could say that we are living in an internally globalized country."
40
"We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind."
40
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