Best 300 quotes in «sociology quotes» category

Now we live in fairyland. The only lightly disappointing thing about this land is that it is smaller than the real world has ever been.

Nowadays, using a computer has become a way of life.

Nothing more sharply reflects the inner contradictions in the emotional world of chivalry than its equivocal attitude to love, which combined the highest spiritualization with extreme sensuality. But illuminating as is a psychological analysis of the equivocal nature of these emotions, the psychological facts are a product of historical circumstances which in turn require explanation and can only be explained sociologically. The psychological mechanism of this attachment to the wife of another, and of this intensification of emotion through the freedom with which it could be expressed, could never have been set in motion without the force of ancient religious and social taboos having first been weakened and the soil prepared for such an exuberant growth of erotic feelings by the rise of a new emancipated upper class. In this case, too, psychology, as so often, is only unclear, disguised, incompletely worked-out sociology.

...obscurantist feature in social scientists trying to combine pluralism with environmentalism. They are so preoccupied with the role of prejudice in creating hostile environments that they perpetually deny the obvious, that stereotypes are rough generalizations about groups derived from long-term observation. Such generalizations are usually correct in describing group tendencies and in predicting certain collective actions, even if they do not adequately account for differences among individuals. Nonetheless, as Goldberg explains, the self-described pluralist and prominent psychologist Gordon Allport went out of his way in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) to reject stereotypes as factually inaccurate as well as socially harmful. For Allport and a great many other social Scientists, nothing is intuitively correct unless it is politically so.

Of all the simplifications to which the human spirit naturally inclines, unable to reconcile itself to the complexity of the real, there is none more dangerous than the attempt to integrate the whole of society in one vast, permanent action group.

Oftentimes, it is for the better but most of the time, you'll see the product of pain sauntering down the sidewalk, spewing its manifestations to every individual who crosses their path.

Only a person who is motivated in the inner depths of his being will help without hesitation and with no obligation for the one helped.

Older people sometimes talk about the good old days when life was better. In fact, they talk nostalgically about their own youth that was irretrievably gone. The past century has made enormous progress in all fields. The standard of living, work environment, health care quality and mobility, and the availability of cultural programs, recreational activities and information – all that clearly speaks in favor of nowadays.

Openness to change is key to implementing new knowledge. That is why one who is indifferent to change is not a friend of knowledge.

One needs to properly possess only a couple of great thoughts--they shed light on many stretches whose illumination one would never have believed in.

Our beliefs affect our behavior towards others. And that makes our beliefs, not just a personal question, but an ethical one.

Our evolution depends on our memory. If we keep forgetting the mistakes of the past, only to keep repeating them, then we will never change. Humanity will never move forward, spiritually or morally, to become superior beings.

O processo de desportivização das práticas corporais de determinado povo, gera novas manifestações corporais, essencialmente diferentes, que auxiliarão em outro processo: o de doutrinação dos sujeitos com os valores do capital. E esse processo acontece às escuras, sem que as pessoas tenham consciência dele.

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Our focus should not be on emerging technologies, but on emerging cultural practices.

Only when we learn to value the differences among us can we achieve the true spirit of humanity.

Perhaps we should rejoice that people’s emotions aren’t designed for the good of the group. Often the best way to benefit one’s group is to displace, subjugate, or annihilate the group next door. Ants in a colony are closely related, and each is a paragon of unselfishness. That’s why ants are one of the few kinds of animal that wage war and take slaves. When human leaders have manipulated or coerced people into submerging their interests into the group’s, the outcomes are some of the history’s worst atrocities.

Phule had propounded the theory of the Aryan invasion as the source of oppression; dalit radicals of the 1920s took it to its extreme; Amedkar denied it.

People usually consider an active and proactive approach as a human virtue. However, sometimes doing nothing is the best choice we can make. If an already difficult situation becomes worse as a consequence of our doing, there is absolutely no excuse for us, regardless of the fact that we acted with the best intentions.

Politics: The Circus of Chicanery

Politics divides a nation, instead of bringing its people together.

Power, it seems, is one of those terms we all understand and can explain--until asked to do so.

People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.

Postmodernity means the exhilarating freedom to pursue anything, yet mind-boggling uncertainty as to what is worth pursuing and in the name of what one should pursue it.

Problems often become worse if incompetent people try to solve them.

Psychology either tends to glorify human beings or trivialize them, leaving out the complexity of the human soul and the demands of God.

Rather than looking for explanations for why all people deserve to be treated with compassion and respect, we ought to be working at creating a world in which people are treated with compassion and respect. Human rights aren’t lying around waiting to be discovered. They’re made, not found.

Rape culture is a concept of unknown origin and of uncertain definition; yet it has made its way into everyday vocabulary and is assumed to be commonly understood. The award-winning documentary film Rape Culture made by Margaret Lazarus in 1975 takes credit for first defining the concept

Religion is an ancient method of governing.

Respect means: even in your absence people speak good of your person

Respect is love in action.

Real cases highlight the fiction surrounding the popular imagery of divided families, a fiction that deserves further examination. The imaginative dissolution of the Union-Confederate border by postwar authors was made possible not only by a reinforcement of the boundary between public and private life, but also by a defense of existing social borders in American society.

Science began with a gadget and a trick. The gadget was the wheel; the trick was fire. We have come a long way from the two-wheel cart to the round-the-world transport plane, or from the sparking flint to man-made nuclear fission. Yet I wonder whether the inhabitants of Hiroshima were more aware of the evolution of science than ancient man facing an on-storming battle chariot. It isn't physics that will make this a better life, nor chemistry, nor sociology. Physics may be used to atom-bomb a nation and chemistry may be used to poison a city and sociology has been used to drive people and classes against classes. Science is only an instrument, no more than a stick or fire or water that can be used to lean on or light or refresh, and also can be used to flail or burn or drown. Knowledge without morals is a beast on the loose.

Serving officers dare not criticize diversity for fear it will kill their careers. Only after he retired did Army Green Beret Major Andy Messing say that Special Forces units should be homogeneous because this promotes cohesion. He said differences of race or religion add to the tensions of a grinding training regimen and perilous combat missions. A recent book-length study of cohesion in Civil War units found that soldiers were less likely to desert if they were fighting alongside men who resembled them in ethnicity, religion, and occupation, and who came from the same part of the country. Authors Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn concluded that men were most likely to risk their lives for men who were most like themselves. They also found that Union veterans’ health was worse in old age if they had seen a lot of combat but were surprised to discover that this effect disappeared for soldiers who had fought in very homogeneous units. Fighting alongside close comrades immunized them against battle trauma.

…sense of futility that comes from doing anything merely to prove to yourself that you can do it: having a child, climbing a mountain, making some sexual conquest, committing suicide. The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it… to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence. Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self-evident.

Rudd proved to be too conservative for the nation he led, while Gillard's campaign for re-election was too cynical. But the problem goes deeper than any individual's failure. Labor in office suffered a return of the identity crisis that has plagued it in its wilderness years in Opposition... the party had given up its soul to the machine. p208

Shame, as an emotion, has a core meaning, in relating individuals to wider social groups and norms -- real or imagined.

Shakespeare was a far better psychologist than Freud, and Jane Austen a far better sociologist than Durkheim

Show me a culture where honesty is considered ridiculous, where nobody's ever accountable for anything, where anger gets admired as a sign of strength, and I'll show you a place where misery is permanent

She spoke to him of her problems, and that made him forget his own. She told him that he was intelligent, thoughtful, becoming, and deeply magnetic - everything he wanted so badly for her to see in him. Attention is the greatest gift when you're too afraid to pay it to yourself, the wind ruminates.

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.

Some old and unrealized ideas will undoubtedly be actualized when their time comes.

Society reproduces itself antagonistically.

Sometimes people think the old days were better than today. Even though life was simpler and slower, it was not necessarily easier.

Single parents - both women and men - can play as critical a role as the traditional two-parent family, and gay and lesbian parents can, and do, raise happy, resilient children. When it comes to family life, form is not merely as important as content. Feeling loved and supported, nurtured and safe, is far more critical than the 'package' it comes in.

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.

Success and failure are relative categories. Therefore, do not exult in victory and do not despair after defeat. Accept the changes in life placidly, knowing that autumn and winter come after summer.

Success is mainly the result of hard work.

Superficial people consider themselves capable of doing everything. The question, however, is who is willing to hire them?

Start acting today if you want to be successful tomorrow.