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Quotes by Sociologist

"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."


"The main concern of the study is with the outline of a theoretical system. Its minor variations from writer to writer are not a matter of concern to this analysis."

"Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally."

"Some people think that as the Chinese economy becomes more and more capitalistic it will inevitably become more democratic."

"If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes."

"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."

"As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it."

"Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being."


"The idea that you surrender your identity when you relinquish national powers is unhelpful. No, indeed, precisely the opposite is the case: if done in an intelligent way, you attain the sovereignty to better solve national problems in cooperation with others."


"Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors."

"Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God."

"Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials."

"Schools are successful only insofar as they reduce the dependence of a child's opportunities upon his social origins."

"Congress requires states to draw single-member districts."

"People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages."

"Most criticism of advertising is written in ignorance of what actually happens inside these agencies."

"Leadership does not depend on being right."

"There is no greater distance than that between a man in prayer and God."

"It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college."

"Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past."

"For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual."

"Effective health care depends on self-care; this fact is currently heralded as if it were a discovery."

"Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist."

"But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world."

"The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli."

"What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited."

"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."

"In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness."

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century."

"In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events."

"There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved."

"Healthy people are those who live in healthy homes on a healthy diet; in an environment equally fit for birth, growth work, healing, and dying... Healthy people need no bureaucratic interference to mate, give birth, share the human condition and die."

"Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition."


"The manufacture of desire isn't at the heart - if it isn't absurd to speak of a heart - of the media torrent. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of the matter."


"The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence."


"What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world."


"Spencer's god was Evolution, sometimes also called Progress."

"The power of ads rests more in the repetition of obvious exhortations than in the subtle transmission of values."

"Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements."

"The increase in straight-ticket party voting in recent years means that competitive congressional races can tip one way or the other depending on the showing of the candidates at the top of the ticket."

"Redistricting is a deeply political process, with incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves (via bipartisan gerrymanders) or to gain additional seats for their party (via partisan gerrymanders)."

"Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy."


"Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things."

"On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself."

"Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real."

"The French were generous in giving us assistance in corps and army artillery, with its personnel, and we were confident from the start of our superiority over the enemy in guns of all calibers."

"There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew."

"Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also."
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