Top 750 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Sociologists

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

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again.

Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart.

Design is people.

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.

The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness

The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.

We must rediscover the distinction between hope and expectation.

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

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

Prestige is the shadow of money and power.

Uncertainty is wondrous, and.. certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death.

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.

Know yourself to improve yourself.

But presidential approval also became a surrogate measure of national unity and patriotism.

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

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.

The functions of the family in a highly differentiated society are not to be interpreted as functions directly on behalf of the society, but on behalf of personality.

Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual.

The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.

Accordingly, globalization is not only something that will concern and threaten us in the future, but something that is taking place in the present and to which we must first open our eyes.

I see that the path of progress has never taken a straight line, but has always been a zigzag course amid the conflicting forces of right and wrong, truth and error, justice and injustice, cruelty and mercy.

Barbecue is the third rail of North Carolina politics.

During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.

Symbolic violence is violence wielded with tacit complicity between its victims and its agents, insofar as both remain unconscious of submitting to or wielding it.

If advertising is not an official or state art, it is nonetheless clearly art.

The higher the social class of other students the higher any given student's achievement.

I wish you all the pleasurable excitement one can have without hurting others and one's own dignity.

Knowledge is power only if man knows what facts not to bother with.

If a weakly mortal is to do anything in the world besides eat the bread thereof, there must be a determined subordination of the whole nature to the one aim no trifling with time, which is passing, with strength which is only too limited.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.

A cardinal American virtue, 'ambition,' promotes a cardinal American vice, 'deviant behavior.

For progressive people the present is the beginning of the future. For conservative people the present is the end of the past.

As far as male and female are concerned, difference is a biological fact, whereas equality is a political, ethical and social concept. No rule of nature or of social organization says that the sexes have to be the same or do the same things in order to be social, political and economic equals.

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.

The mother is the early care giver and primary source of identification for all children.... A daughter continues to identify with the mother

The closer a Negro got to the ballot box, the more he looked like a rapist.

Power does not reside in institutions, not even the state or large corporations. It is located in the networks that structure society.

Being a housewife, makes women sick.It may therefore be that married women say they are happy because they are sick.To be happy in a relationship which imposes so many impediments on her, as traditional marriage does, women must be slightly mentally ill

Discussing external migration issues is impossible without discussing internal migration issues

Going to war accelerated the move from indirect to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot pay for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues. Almost all war-making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat - including men - from reluctant citizens who have other uses for their resources.

My students often ask me, 'What is sociology?' And I tell them, 'It's the study of the way in which human beings are shaped by things that they don't see.'

Autonomous state actions will regularly take forms that attempt to reinforce the authority, political longevity, and social control of the state.

Looking backward always presents an overdetermined depiction of fate; by this perspective we leave out of focus the possibilities of action which existed at the time.

It is the tragic story of the cultural crusader in a mass society that he cannot win, but that we would be lost without him.

Humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate.

Every part of the photographic image carries some information that contributes to its total statement; the viewer's responsibility is to see, in the most literal way, everything that is there and respond to it.

Find a balance between one's responsibility as a white person to confront acts of racism and one's subconscious sense of power and privilege over people of color when reacting to the [racist] event.

In my opinion, fun is what makes advertising successful.

It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct — if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

The Spirit of Cities presents a new approach to the study of cities in which the focus is placed on a city's defining ethos or values. The style of the book is attractively conversational and even autobiographical, and far from current social science positivism. For a lover of cities--and perhaps even for one who is not--The Spirit of Cities is consistently good reading.

Ours was a history of well-intentioned beginnings that end with a fight at every turn.

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.

Placing a time limit on affirmative action would in all likelihood blunt the orchestrated politics of controversy that now bedevils it. And thinking about phasing it into a class-based entitlement program may at long last bring Americans around to a consideration of the growing inequality that threatens the harmony of our democracy far more than the alarmist cry of 'racial division.'

The manipulation of statistical formulas is no substitute for knowing what one is doing.

Beauty, delicacy and position-these were the foundations of courtly equestrianism