40 Quotes by David Riesman

It is among the less privileged groups relatively new to leisure and consumption that the zest for possessions retains something of its pristine energy.

Drivers in a traffic jam, frustrated by each others presence, are not the most amiable of men.

Those who are excluded from meaningful work are, by an large, excluded from meaningful play.

The ethical regime [of the Jews] was quite definitely Ptolemaic, revolving around the small group of Jews, not the larger Gentile group and, accordingly, they learned to remain unimpressed by Gentile temporal power. Being unimpressed did not mean being unafraid material power might beat or starve one to death; it did mean refusing to surrender moral hegemony to the majority merely because it had power.

Nowadays, truth is the greatest news. The mass media are the wholesalers, the peer groups, the retailers of the communications industry.

Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us.

Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

The mass media are the wholesalers; the peer-groups, the retailers of the communications industry

One of the things people are fleeing when they leave the city is the need either to reject people who are less well educated than themselves, or to accept them with all that implies for their children’s education and future placement in the society.