547 Quotes About Sociology

In real life, the truth is a rarity, while lies are common place.

Success is mainly the result of hard work.

At the behest of the criterion of authenticity, much that was once thought to make up the very fabric of culture has come to seem of little account, mere fantasy or ritual, or downright falsification. Conversely, much that culture traditionally condemned and sought to exclude is accorded a considerable moral authority by reason of the authenticity claimed for it, for example, disorder, violence, unreason.

A happy man doesn't reconsider life.

Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous

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.

There's a left-wing slogan that says, 'If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.' Like all slogans, it has lost its meaning with overuse. But it expresses something profoundly important: It is only possible to be comfortable if we accept things as they are without questioning them. Once you start paying attention, once you start looking closely at the world, outrage is not just reasonable but inescapable.

We should enjoy every minute we live today because who knows if we will have a chance to do so tomorrow.

To stand for something, whether in child-rearing or any other sphere, is of course to risk error; it is also to become conspicuous under the gaze of the Other, to give away one's position and to invite rejection. But it is also the only way through which social evolution can take a truly moral direction; it is the inescapable consequence of recognizing and taking seriously the fact that it is we who make the world, not 'it' or 'them'.