Charles Horton Cooley Quotes

Quotes about:

• The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Moving, Pride, Reflection

  Charles Horton Cooley, Hans-Joachim Schubert (1998). “On Self and Social Organization”, p.22, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

• Society is an interweaving and interworking of mental selves. I imagine your mind and especially what your mind thinks about my mind and what my mind thinks about what your mind thinks about my mind. I dress my mind before you and expect that you will dress yours before mine. Whoever cannot or will not perform these feats is not properly in the game.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Thinking, Self, Games

  "Life and the Student: Roadside Notes on Human Nature, Society, and Letters". Book by Charles Cooley, p. 200, 1927.

  34 Copy quote

• The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  People, Imagination, Facts

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.22, Transaction Publishers

  25 Copy quote

• There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Way, Attacking, Surface

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.150, Transaction Publishers

  87 Copy quote

• As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Eye, Reflection, Water

  Charles Horton Cooley (2017). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.231, Routledge

  24 Copy quote

• Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Thinking, Mind, Action

  8 Copy quote

• If youth is the period of hero-worship, so also is it true that hero-worship, more than anything else, perhaps, gives one the sense of youth. To admire, to expand one's self, to forget the rut, to have a sense of newness and life and hope, is to feel young at any time of life.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Hero, Self, Giving

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.314, Transaction Publishers

  7 Copy quote

• An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Art, Failure, Creative

  53 Copy quote

• 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.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Life, Travel, Mean

  Charles Horton Cooley, Hans-Joachim Schubert (1998). “On Self and Social Organization”, p.95, University of Chicago Press

  11 Copy quote

• To cease to admire is a proof of deterioration.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Aggravation, Deterioration, Admiration

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.320, Transaction Publishers

  10 Copy quote

• Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Men, Individuality, Bread

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

  14 Copy quote

• The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Issues, Mind, Obscurity

  Charles Horton Cooley (1922). “Human Nature and the Social Order”

  18 Copy quote

• Form the habit of making decisions when your spirit is fresh...to let dark moods lead is like choosing cowards to command armies.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Dark, Army, Decision

  20 Copy quote

• The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Self, Ideas, Mind

  Charles Horton Cooley, Hans-Joachim Schubert (1998). “On Self and Social Organization”, p.161, University of Chicago Press

  14 Copy quote

• To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Powerful, Trouble, Ifs

  5 Copy quote

• If the man succeeds in becoming indifferent to the opinions of his neighbors he runs into another danger, that of a distorted and extravagant self of the pride sort, since by the very process of gaining independence and immunity from the stings of depreciation and misunderstanding, he has perhaps lost that wholesome deference to some social tribunal that a man cannot dispense with and remain quite sane.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Running, Pride, Men

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

  4 Copy quote

• It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Greed, Consciousness, Consumerism

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Government, Church, Needs

  Charles Horton Cooley (1922). “Human Nature and the Social Order”

  9 Copy quote

• Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Art, Anger, Order

  Charles Horton Cooley (2015). “Life and the Student: Roadside Notes on Human Nature, Society, and Letters”, p.61, Transaction Publishers

  14 Copy quote

• The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Life, Power, Inspire

  Charles Horton Cooley, Hans-Joachim Schubert (1998). “On Self and Social Organization”, p.161, University of Chicago Press

  17 Copy quote

• The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Struggle, Passion, Self

  Charles Horton Cooley (1964). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.248, Transaction Publishers

  10 Copy quote

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

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Life And Love, Fall, Failure

  55 Copy quote

• To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Travel, Vacation, Carpe Diem

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.249, Transaction Publishers

  20 Copy quote

• No matter what a man does, he is not fully sane or human unless there is a spirit of freedom in him, a soul unconfined by purpose and larger than the practicable world.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Freedom, Men, Soul

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.188, Transaction Publishers

  16 Copy quote

• We are born to action and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Acting, Firsts, Action

  Charles Horton Cooley (1922). “Human Nature and the Social Order”

  9 Copy quote

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