90 Quotes by Charles Horton Cooley

We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind.

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.

Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.