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Quotes by Sociologist
"Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions."
29
"Sales may lead to advertising as much as advertising leads to sales."
29
"Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon."
29
"I don't think anyone in the media thinks strategically about society."
29
"The West hasn't reached its universal state as yet, although its close to it, but it certainly has evolved out of its warring state phase, which it was in for a couple of centuries."
29
"Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities."
29
"Thus, in general, in the first instance, the direction of interest in empirical fact will be canalised by the logical structure of the theoretical system."
29
"The modern Little Red Riding Hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objection to being eaten by the wolf."
29
"We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms."
29
"Religion is love; in no case is it logic."
29
"From all this it follows what the general character of the problem of the development of a body of scientific knowledge is, in so far as it depends on elements internal to science itself."
28
"Children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social compositions, will achieve at quite different levels."
28
"A child's learning is a function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher."
28
"A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind."
28
"As an example, one of the schools I have been studying is too small to compete effectively in most sports, but participates with vigor each year in the state music contests."
28
"I don't for the life of me understand how anybody could contemplate the results of the 2000 election in the US and say that electoral politics doesn't matter any more, and that Ralph Nader was right when he said there is no difference between the two parties."
28
"Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers."
28
"The conception that, instead of this, contemporary society is at or near a turning point is very prominent in the views of a school of social scientists who, though they are still comparatively few, are getting more and more of a hearing."
28
"The only people available to change the world are the people now living in it, with all the beliefs they bring along - however retrograde those beliefs may appear to those of us who see ourselves as enlightened."
28
"A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed."
28
"There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake."
28
"Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism."
27
"Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act."
27
"Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty."
27
"There are always women who will take men on their own terms. If I were a man I wouldn't bother to change while there are women like that around."
27
"A century of convulsive change leaves huge demographic gouge marks."
27
"Moreover, broad plans commensurate with our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy."
27
"Educational institutes can no longer be prizes in church politics or furnish berths for failure in other walks of life."
27
"Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten."
27
"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam."
27
"Among those who are satisfactory in this respect it is desirable to have represented as great a diversity of intellectual tradition, social milieu and personal character as possible."
27
"The present structure of rewards in high schools produces a response on the part of an adolescent social system which effectively impedes the process of education."
27
"However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home."
27
"Mills insisted that a sociologist's proper subject was the intersection of biography and history."
27
"Special emphasis should be laid on this intimate interrelation of general statements about empirical fact with the logical elements and structure of theoretical systems."
Fact,
27
"So every day I'm mindful as I watch the Bush crowd extend their sway into policies of every imaginable variety, and over almost every square foot of earth, that the control of the American state is a matter of urgency."
27
"If love means that one person absorbs the other, then no real relationship exists any more. Love evaporates; there is nothing left to love. The integrity of self is gone."
27
"So I see that Christianity in believing in a Creator pulls together more facts, data, inner experience and ability than any mechanistic view could hold for me."
27
"Acceptance of the power of God in one's life lays the groundwork for personal commitment to both science and Christianity, which so often have been in conflict."
26
"Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training."
26
"The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship."
26
"One of the sad commentaries on the way women are viewed in our society is that we have to fit one category. I have never felt that I had to be in one category."
25
"Renunciation - that is the great fact we all, individuals and classes, have to learn. In trying to avoid it we bring misery to ourselves and others."
25
"The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion."
25
"Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals."
25
"Demands for equality for women are threats to men's self-esteem and sense of sexual turf."
25
"We assume, to begin with, that the individual is at least as complex in his internal structure as the language is which he speaks - otherwise, how could he speak a language which is complex?"
25
"In a high school, the norms act to hold down the achievements of those who are above average, so that the school's demands will be at a level easily maintained by the majority."
25
"There is a fuzzy but real distinction that can and I believe should be made, between patriotism, which is attachment to a way of life, and nationalism, which is the insistence that your way of life deserves to rule over other ways of life."
24
"The educational resources provided by a child's fellow students are more important for his achievement than are the resources provided by the school board."
24
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