Sociological Quotes

• Art should never be sociological; it has got to be timeless. It's got to be your vision and how you can represent the world you see.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Art, Vision, World

  "The Only Punk Left: Vivienne Westwood". Interview with Kathryn Flett, slide 1, www.harpersbazaar.com. February 05, 2013.

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• All the skills which I have acquired during my sociological life allow me to diagnose and explain what is going on, but not to predict what will happen.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Skills, Happens

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

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• The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Sight, Tasks, Helping

  "The sociologist influencing Labour's new generation". Interview with Randeep Ramesh, www.theguardian.com. November 3, 2010.

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• The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden.

  Pierre Bourdieu

  Sociology, Function

  Pierre Bourdieu, Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (1999). “On Television”, p.17, The New Press

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• Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.

  David Crystal

  Writing, Issues, Language

  "Watch what you're saying!: Linguist David Crystal on Twitter, texting and our native tongue" by Joy Lo Dico, www.independent.co.uk. March 14, 2010.

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• Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

  Richard Russo

  Sociology, Deals, Abstraction

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• To those of you who study history, economics, sociology, literature and language I present the challenge of the utilization of the enormous resources in our grasp to the problem of creating a genuinely good life for yourselves and your children.

  Polykarp Kusch

  Good Life, Children, Creating

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• The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Writing, Eden, Creative

  "The Tanner Lectures on Human Values". Book edited by Sterling McMurrin, 1980.

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• There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

  Ralph Ellison

  Reality, Fairy Stories, Leaving

  National Book Award Acceptance Speech, www.nationalbook.org. 1953.

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• The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Society exacts it.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Creativity, Creative, Demand

  Nadine Gordimer (2012). “Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1950-2008”, p.409, A&C Black

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• Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, African American, Tolerance

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.258, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

  Paul Nurse

  Philosophy, Real, Careers

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• The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is its task and its promise.

  C. Wright Mills

  Two, Imagination, Promise

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.6, Oxford University Press

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• It is the political task of the social scientist — as of any liberal educator — continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work — and, as an educator, in his life as well — this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society.

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Issues, Imagination

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.187, Oxford University Press

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• War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies.

  Ernest Becker

  War, Class, Safety

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• Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.

  Robert Bly

  Grief, Prose

  Source: www.utne.com

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• The sociological evidence of the contagion of happiness and sadness suggests something quite remarkable: of all your relationships, of all the people capable of making you happiest or irritating you the most, those who have the greatest effect on your mood and even your state of health are those closest to hand.

  Lynne McTaggart

  Inspirational, Sadness, Hands

  Lynne McTaggart (2012). “The Bond: How to Fix Your Falling-Down World”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

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• Humanism is not wrong in its cry for sociological healing, but humanism is not producing it.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Healing, Cry, Humanism

  Francis August Schaeffer (1982). “The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian view of the west”

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• I'm not a sports dude, but I'm interested in the sociological implications of it.

  Ian MacKaye

  Sports, Implications

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• Power is something that is not really visible. Some people have the power to rise above circumstance. Sociological factors and DNA are not all that determine success. It is power.

  Frederick Lenz

  Success, Buddhism, Dna

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• If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Religious, Giving Up, Independent

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2011). “Letters Papers from Prison”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

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• Only a work democracy can create the foundation of genuine freedom. Long experience in sociological disputes leads me to expect that a great many people will take offense at the disclosure of this miscalculation. It makes the highest demands on people's will to veracity; it puts a heavy burden on everyday living; it places all social responsibility on those who work, be it in the factory, in the office, on the farm, in the laboratory, or wherever.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Responsibility, Long, People

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.

  Erich Fromm

  Real, Mistake, Hands

  "Psychoanalyse und Soziologie". "Critical Theory and Society : A Reader" by S. E. Bronner, 1989.

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• Psychoanalysis , which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all.

  Erich Fromm

  Play, Psychics, Determined

  "Psychoanalyse und Soziologie". "Critical Theory and Society : A Reader" by S. E. Bronner, 1989.

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• The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

  William Graham Sumner

  Character, Men, Views

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.107, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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