Sociological Quotes

• Art should never be sociological; it has got to be timeless. It's got to be your vision and how you can represent the world you see.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Art, Vision, World

  "The Only Punk Left: Vivienne Westwood". Interview with Kathryn Flett, slide 1, www.harpersbazaar.com. February 05, 2013.

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• All the skills which I have acquired during my sociological life allow me to diagnose and explain what is going on, but not to predict what will happen.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Skills, Happens

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

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• The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Sight, Tasks, Helping

  "The sociologist influencing Labour's new generation". Interview with Randeep Ramesh, www.theguardian.com. November 3, 2010.

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• The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden.

  Pierre Bourdieu

  Sociology, Function

  Pierre Bourdieu, Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (1999). “On Television”, p.17, The New Press

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• Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.

  David Crystal

  Writing, Issues, Language

  "Watch what you're saying!: Linguist David Crystal on Twitter, texting and our native tongue" by Joy Lo Dico, www.independent.co.uk. March 14, 2010.

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• Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

  Richard Russo

  Sociology, Deals, Abstraction

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• To those of you who study history, economics, sociology, literature and language I present the challenge of the utilization of the enormous resources in our grasp to the problem of creating a genuinely good life for yourselves and your children.

  Polykarp Kusch

  Good Life, Children, Creating

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• The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Society exacts it.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Creativity, Creative, Demand

  Nadine Gordimer (2012). “Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1950-2008”, p.409, A&C Black

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• There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

  Ralph Ellison

  Reality, Fairy Stories, Leaving

  National Book Award Acceptance Speech, www.nationalbook.org. 1953.

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• Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

  Paul Nurse

  Philosophy, Real, Careers

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• Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, African American, Tolerance

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.258, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Writing, Eden, Creative

  "The Tanner Lectures on Human Values". Book edited by Sterling McMurrin, 1980.

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• The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is its task and its promise.

  C. Wright Mills

  Two, Imagination, Promise

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.6, Oxford University Press

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• It is the political task of the social scientist — as of any liberal educator — continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work — and, as an educator, in his life as well — this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society.

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Issues, Imagination

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.187, Oxford University Press

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• War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies.

  Ernest Becker

  War, Class, Safety

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• Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.

  Robert Bly

  Grief, Prose

  Source: www.utne.com

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• Humanism is not wrong in its cry for sociological healing, but humanism is not producing it.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Healing, Cry, Humanism

  Francis August Schaeffer (1982). “The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian view of the west”

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• The sociological evidence of the contagion of happiness and sadness suggests something quite remarkable: of all your relationships, of all the people capable of making you happiest or irritating you the most, those who have the greatest effect on your mood and even your state of health are those closest to hand.

  Lynne McTaggart

  Inspirational, Sadness, Hands

  Lynne McTaggart (2012). “The Bond: How to Fix Your Falling-Down World”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm not a sports dude, but I'm interested in the sociological implications of it.

  Ian MacKaye

  Sports, Implications

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• There's substance to the point that sociological information is new. We have five years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Gay, Years, Substance

  "“A Historic Moment”: California Couple on Decades-Long Legal Struggle for Marriage Equality". Interview with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. March 27, 2013.

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• On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger.

  Hu Shih

  Historical Knowledge, Self, Achievement

  Hu Shih (2013). “English Writings of Hu Shih: Literature and Society”, p.99, Springer Science & Business Media

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• The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.

  Gus Van Sant

  War, Climbing, Shopping

  Interview with Steve Head, www.ign.com. October 22, 2003.

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• As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.

  Jane Smiley

  Political, Moral, Conversation

  Jane Smiley (2011). “Ordinary Love and Good Will”, p.108, Anchor

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• According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.

  Recep Tayyip Erdogan

  Religious, Views, Historical

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• I don't believe that clothes can start a revolution, but I do believe that fashion is often a manifestation of a sociological or political climate.

  Tom Ford

  Fashion, Believe, Clothes

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