547 Quotes About Sociology

Be careful about financial offers that often come by email. Before you respond to such an offer, ask yourself: do I really need a new problem?

We're presently in the midst of a third intellectual revolution. The first came with Newton: the planets obey physical laws. The second came with Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws. In today’s third revolution, were coming to realize that even minds and societies emerge from interacting laws that can be regarded as computations. Everything is a computation.

The focus is on tearing out dysfunction and blight, instead of finding existing strengths and building on what people value and what is working well.

Race is not, as I have often been reminded while working on this project, a system of classification: it is a system of oppression. There has never been, and I can't imagine how there could ever be, a way of classifying the peoples of the world that isn't also a way of controlling people.

Even when we are confused about someone’s gender, and don’t have a greater awareness of what it means to be trans, we have a choice to respond with kindness rather than cruelty.

Some critics of trans people have told us that we shouldn’t feel this pain of being denied the legitimacy of our own selves; gender is, of course, just a social construct. I wonder if these people also tell widows not to bother grieving their husbands, because marriage is also just another social construct.

We assume that anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don’t see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long.

Language is a social art.

All are bound to serve and obey, but few are aware, it all depends on how high in the hierarchy you are determined to aim.