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Quotes by Sociologist
"Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful."
38
"A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it."
38
"Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements, just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth."
38
"So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational."
38
"The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyper real."
38
"Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore."
38
"Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective."
38
"The intellectual takes as a starting point his self and relates the world to his own sensibilities; the scientist accepts an existing field of knowledge and seeks to map out the unexplored terrain."
38
"The mobilisation which Bush has been able to perform since 11 September 2001 has to be fought - at least by Americans - in the name of a wise, honourable and democratic patriotism."
38
"It is probably safe to say that all the changes of factual knowledge which have led to the relativity theory, resulting in a very great theoretical development, are completely trivial from any point of view except their relevance to the structure of a theoretical system."
37
"Revelation and the nature of truth must be viewed in reference to the structure of language."
37
"If observed facts of undoubted accuracy will not fit any of the alternatives it leaves open, the system itself is in need of reconstruction."
37
"This experience actually means the very opposite: the largest military power was unable to stop such a sensitive attack and will be unable to rule out such a possibility in the future. Precisely this is the background to the United States' military interventions."
37
"Why, I ask, isn't it possible that advertising as a whole is a fantastic fraud, presenting an image of America taken seriously by no one, least of all by the advertising men who create it?"
37
"To meet the shortage of supplies from America, due to lack of shipping, the representatives of the different supply departments were constantly in search of available material and supplies in Europe."
37
"I forced myself to think what is the new concept and it became clear to me that it was risk, not only in technology and ecology, but in life and employment, too."
37
"Some fine day, Democrats may figure out how to get on the right side of the value divide - how to define America as a place of the common good and not a playground of the strong."
37
"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century."
37
"A gloss is a total system of perception and language."
37
"A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion."
37
"The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other."
37
"All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."
37
"It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless."
37
"Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state."
37
"Particular individuals who might never consider dropping out if they were in a different high school might decide to drop out if they attended a school where many boys and girls did so."
37
"Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual."
37
"The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity."
37
"There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you."
37
"Modern sociology is virtually an attempt to take up the larger program of social analysis and interpretation which was implicit in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, but which was suppressed for a century by prevailing interest in the technique of the production of wealth."
37
"But the scientific importance of a change in knowledge of fact consists precisely in j its having consequences for a system of theory."
37
"In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth."
36
"Votes in federal elections are cast and counted in a highly decentralized and variable fashion, with no uniform ballots and few national standards."
36
"The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations."
36
"Today's global justice movement may be the biggest, most diverse and energetic in history."
36
"The Engineer Corps is charged with all construction, including light railways and roads."
36
"We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization."
36
"To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light."
36
"But presidential approval also became a surrogate measure of national unity and patriotism."
36
"Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College."
36
"America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub."
36
"I am concerned about how to reverse the process by which a fundamentalist right and a corporate elite were able to seize power in the United States."
36
"If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing."
36
"I'm sure Putnam is right that there's been a decline in certain kinds of organizations like bowling leagues. But people participate in communities in other ways."
36
"The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles."
36
"Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life."
36
"There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point."
Life,
36
"It was one thing to contain the Soviet Union in Europe because Britain, France, and Germany were all willing to join in. But will Japan and other Asian countries be willing to join in the containment of China?"
36
"Don't take the will for the deed; get the deed."
36
"An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one."
36
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