Sociology Quotes - Page 2

A lie distorts the image of reality. It is a delusion of the human mind which can disrupt an individual's sense of what is morally right or wrong.

The strictest judges are ignorant people.

Nothing represents a man better than his ideas.

Every fool has an idea how to change the world. Wise people think about how to improve the world around them.

Do not look for company at all costs, and especially do not allow loneliness to lead you to fickle love or false friendship.

Those in authority within institutions and social structures attempt to justify their rule by linking it, as if it were a necessary consequence, with moral symbols, sacred emblems, or legal formulae which are widely believed and deeply internalized. These central conceptions may refer to a god or gods, the 'votes of the majority,' the 'will of the people,' the 'aristocracy of talents or wealth,' to the 'divine right of kings' or to the alleged extraordinary endowment of the person of the ruler himself.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.

Curiosity is crucial for innovation. We are all born curious, but only a small number of people remain curious for a lifetime.

Be patient in life, knowing that there is a real possibility that the desired outcome could happen without your direct involvement.

The appeal by twentieth-century pluralists to scientific method was also ideologically—and even messianically—driven. It ignored scientific data that interfered with environmentalist assumptions and misrepresented socialist faith as “scientific planning.

We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.

The meaning of man's existence is not to dominate over others, but to better humanity.

The older the friendship, the stronger the trust.

Everyone is so locked into the current way of doing things, they never see the larger picture or other, more responsible and efficient possibilities. A REAL economy is always wanting to limit consumption/manufacturing as much as possible by assuring the strategically "best" and "adaptable" productions at all times, while keeping balance with human needs and public health.It is a total shift in intent than what we have today.

A friend is a person who always understands your preoccupations, even when other people do not perceive them at all.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

But into the first decades of the twentieth century, even at the New York Times, it was uncommon for journalists to see a sharp divide between facts and values. Yet the belief in objectivity is just this: the belief that one can and should separate facts from values. Facts, in this view, are assertions about the world open to independent validation. They stand beyond the distorting influences of any individual's personal preferences. Values, in this view, are an individual's conscious or unconscious preferences for what the world should be; they are seen as ultimately subjective and so without legitimate claim on other people. The belief in objectivity is a faith in "facts," a distrust of "values," and a commitment to their segregation.

Good sociologists have always had an insatiable curiosity about about even the trivialities of human behaviour, and if this curiosity leads a sociologist to devote many years to the painstaking exploration of some small corner of the social world that may appear quite trivial to others, so be it: Why do more teenagers pick their noses in rural Minnesota than in rural Iowa? What are the patterns of church socials over a twenty-year period in small-town Saskatchewan? What is the correlation between religious affiliation and accident-proneness among elderly Hungarians?

Success and failure are relative categories. Therefore, do not exult in victory and do not despair after defeat. Accept the changes in life placidly, knowing that autumn and winter come after summer.

But unfortunately you get no further by merely wishing class-distinctionsaway. More exactly, it is necessary to wish them away, but your wish has noefficacy unless you grasp what it involves. The fact that has got to be faced isthat to abolish class-distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself. Here amI, a typical member of the middle class. It is easy for me to say that I want toget rid of class-distinctions, but nearly everything I think and do is a result ofclass-distinctions. All my notions –notions of good and evil, of pleasant and unpleasant,of funny and serious, of ugly and beautiful–are essentially middle-classnotions; my taste in books and food and clothes, my sense of honour, my tablemanners, my turns of speech, my accent, even the characteristic movements ofmy body, are the products of a special kind of upbringing and a special nicheabout half-way up the social hierarchy.

In this view, man is an energy-converting organism who must exert his manipulative powers, who must damage his world in some ways, who must make it uncomfortable for others, etc., by his own nature as an active being. He seeks self-expansion from a very uncertain power base. Even if man hurts others, it is because he is weak and afraid, not because he is confident and cruel. Rousseau summed up this point of view with the idea that only the strong person can be ethical, not the weak one.

In monetary parlance, there are three types of people - who know how to make money from money (rich); who earn and spend (middle class); and those who don’t know either and remain poor. Their percentages vary from country to country.

In America, Amazon competes with yahoo and Google by competing with a gas station. Imagine if every price in QT was the same, but had a for sale sign beside higher prices, and you'll have either Amazon or Craiglist.

Never give a conscious meaning to your unconscious acts!

The key to successful social behaviour: be approachable and understand the needs of others.

Shame, as an emotion, has a core meaning, in relating individuals to wider social groups and norms -- real or imagined.

Only a person who is motivated in the inner depths of his being will help without hesitation and with no obligation for the one helped.

The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies. "Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth.""Right, like geologists.""Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle...""So, it's like oceanography or hydrology.""And the atmosphere.""Meteorology, climatology...""It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet.""How is that different from ecology or environmental science?""Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--""Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci.""Some geographers specialize in different world regions.""Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department.""They're not."(Long pause.)"So, uh, what is it that do study then?

Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don't know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons.

Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.

Ask your friends for help if you need it. Asking for help can be costly if you don't have friends.

...the only way out consists of using a social mask.This is why those under depression will smile more as well as make efforts to please and entertain compared to anyone else....If they could hide in public, and they do hide in other ways, both psychological and physical.The psychological feeling of being trapped comes afterwards from the need to have social life, and that's when the anti-social personality starts developing furthermore.

The real enemy" is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists.

Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.

Success is mainly the result of hard work.

Perhaps the difference between a professor and a bus driver is that the professor can say stupid things with complete authority while the bus driver is not authorized to make brilliant insights.

Those who have no knowledge are often willing to occupy influential positions with the aim of acquiring every possible benefit.

Kids, no matter how big your problems are – ask your parents for help and advice.

The more invested I am in my own ideas about reality, the more those experiences will feel like victimizations rather than the ups and downs of relating. Actually, I believe that the less I conceptualize things that way, the more likely it is that people will want to stay by me, because they will not feel burdened, consciously or unconsciously, by my projections, judgments, entitlements, or unrealistic expectations.

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.

A fairy-tale life exists only in fairy tales.

Throughout the history of the Kensington Rune Stone in the twentiethcentury, memories of an ancient battle were repeatedly evoked toaddress the concerns about more recent battles. The skræling enduredas a convenient symbol of the threats posed by secularization, urbanization,and diversification. As sociologist Richard K. Fenn observes,“Any society is a reservoir of old longings and ancient hatreds. Theseneed to be understood, addressed, resolved and transcended if a societyis to have a future that is different from its past.” Furthermore, whena society does not adequately confront its past, it perpetually finds “anew target that resembles but also differs from the source of originalconflict.” If Fenn is correct, old enemies will continue to emerge inthe face of new enemies unless Minnesotans can understand, address,resolve, and transcend the state’s original sin: the unjust treatment ofthe region’s first inhabitants.

When ill, the patient assumes what Parsons called "the sick-role". Accordingly, the sick person is, on the one hand, excused his or her social responsabilites, but, on the other hand, is expected to desire a return to health and to comply unquestioningly with the directives of medical experts in order to achieve this goal

Single parents - both women and men - can play as critical a role as the traditional two-parent family, and gay and lesbian parents can, and do, raise happy, resilient children. When it comes to family life, form is not merely as important as content. Feeling loved and supported, nurtured and safe, is far more critical than the 'package' it comes in.

In my early teens, [my grandfather] would sometimes stomp around his living room, where he used to shave towards mid-day with bowl, brush and open razor, deriding my ignorance and mocking the made-up discipline of sociology, which I at one stage claimed to be studying. 'What is sociology?' he roared derisively, twisting and rolling the silly word on his Hampshire tongue. I knew, alas, that he was quite right.

In reality, there is no such thing as absolute freedom. The rules of social interaction determine one's freedom.

I am successful because of my brains and my guts, put together, and I don't need some fancy-ass degree from a bunch of sweater-vest-wearing pricks who haven't gotten laid since Bush Senior was president... Do you know who studies sociology? People who would rather observe life than live it.

Religion thrives on want and fear of the unknown, on lack of education. A frightened and confused human is fed by religious institutions with the illusion that the solution to his real problems is to appeal to the good will of an imaginary supernatural divinity religious institutions claim to represent. With one hand they offer a cup of rice and a pair of used shoes someone else has paid for. With the other, they place the Bible on the table, setting up the poor in spirit for the belief trap.

Tell us which ideas you promote and we will know which type of person you are.

Now we live in fairyland. The only lightly disappointing thing about this land is that it is smaller than the real world has ever been.

As with outlaw figures, in diverse musical and oral cultures throughout the world- Mexican corridos and Egyptian shaabi music, for example- Hip Hop's irreverence toward dominant values and noncompliance with the status quo creates alternative, counterhegemonic spaces.

The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. For example, when the British invaded India, many Indians accepted to work for the British to kill off Indians who resisted their occupation. So in other words, many Indians were hired to kill other Indians on behalf of the enemy for a paycheck. Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people - and people of other nations - for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers.

Postmodernity means the exhilarating freedom to pursue anything, yet mind-boggling uncertainty as to what is worth pursuing and in the name of what one should pursue it.

Stable husbanding of the land requires community-wide language and norms for resolving interpersonal conflict, facilitating barter and trade, determining shares of work and output and maintaining organizational hierarchies. Although such social functions are the requisites of community life everywhere, the ways of performing them evolve differently from place to place. Each society develops its practices and sets of myths, symbols and rational justifications, which usually are held to be superior to those of other societies........And just as material reasons for self-sufficiency can turn communities towards economic imperialism, so the ideational justifications for autonomy can turn them into presumptuous civilizers of other peoples.

The sportification process of bodily practices of certain society, generates new physical manifestations, essentially different, which will help in another process: the indoctrination of subjects with capital values. And this process happens in the dark, without people having consciousness of it.

Granting that there is some truth to the theory that defects in society give rise to the emergence of criminals, I still maintain that those who use this theory as a defense of criminality are overlooking the fact that there are many people in this defective society who survive without resorting to crime. The argument to the contrary is pure sophistry.

All social interactions require some loss of freedom.

In our society, defecation involves anindividual in activity which is defined as inconsistent withthe cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of ourperformances. Such activity also causes the individual todisarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play," that is, todrop from his face the expressive mask that he employs inface-to-face interaction. At the same time ic becomes difficultfor him to reassemble his personal front should the need toenter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is areason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them.

Trying to take away someone’s language is usually the first step in trying to change them.