top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Sociologist
"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."
51
"Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends."
51
"For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction."
50
"Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise."
50
"The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist."
50
"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."
50
"Initially, the horrific images of September 11th triggered an enormous wave of solidarity."
50
"We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself."
50
"With Germany herself falling, it is not strange that the nations leagued with her also went down to defeat."
49
"So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids."
49
"Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release."
49
"A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy."
49
"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."
48
"Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor."
48
"The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy."
48
"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."
48
"Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment."
48
"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."
48
"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."
48
"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."
48
"Europe itself is an embodiment of this diversity."
48
"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."
48
"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."
48
"Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power."
48
"Human inertia makes the everyday environment, the furniture, as it were, appear to be a given."
47
"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."
47
"Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated."
47
"Relinquishing apparent national sovereignty does not have to entail a loss of national sovereignty, but can actually be a benefit."
Loss,
47
"Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society."
47
"Sure, I've often been misrepresented - anyone frequently quoted has this experience."
47
"The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse."
47
"Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness."
47
"Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other."
47
"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."
46
"A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius."
46
"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."
46
"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."
46
"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."
46
"The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare."
46
"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."
46
"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."
45
"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."
45
"You could say that we are living in an internally globalized country."
45
"Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet."
45
"A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory."
45
"Sentimentality about nature denatures everything it touches."
45
"It is in games that many men discover their paradise."
44
bottom of page