American Sociologist Quotations

Today's practicality is often no more than the accepted form of yesterday's theory.

That is, a system starts with a group of interrelated propositions which involve reference to empirical observations within the logical framework of the propositions in question.

The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

Revelation and the nature of truth must be viewed in reference to the structure of language.

The price that one pays for refusing to act on the truth as one sees it, is to be led to believe untruth to avoid guilt.

Among those who are satisfactory in this respect it is desirable to have represented as great a diversity of intellectual tradition, social milieu and personal character as possible.

Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.

The French were generous in giving us assistance in corps and army artillery, with its personnel, and we were confident from the start of our superiority over the enemy in guns of all calibers.

The conception that, instead of this, contemporary society is at or near a turning point is very prominent in the views of a school of social scientists who, though they are still comparatively few, are getting more and more of a hearing.

Verbal and nonverbal activity is a unified whole, and theory and methodology should be organized or created to treat it as such.

The Engineer Corps is charged with all construction, including light railways and roads.

From all this it follows what the general character of the problem of the development of a body of scientific knowledge is, in so far as it depends on elements internal to science itself.

Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions.

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.

That a society controls, to a greater or lesser extent, the behavior of its members is a universal; but the methods, the particulars of that control, vary from one culture to another.

The only people available to change the world are the people now living in it, with all the beliefs they bring along - however retrograde those beliefs may appear to those of us who see ourselves as enlightened.

The system becomes logically closed when each of the logical implications which can be derived from any one proposition within the system finds its statement in another proposition in the same system.

Courage to continue comes from deeper sources than outward results.

Now obviously the propositions of the system have reference to matters of empirical fact; if they did not, they could have no claim to be called scientific.

When I conform to truth, I do not conform to an abstract principle; I conform to the nature of God.

In so far as such a theory is empirically correct it will also tell us what empirical facts it should be possible to observe in a given set of circumstances.

The detached observer's view is one window on the world.

With acknowledgement of residues, we can be more easily prepared to grant the unit of science, the overlapping of disciplines, and the total coherence of all facts.

Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.

The manufacture of desire isn't at the heart - if it isn't absurd to speak of a heart - of the media torrent. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of the matter.

If language did not affect behavior, it could have no meaning.

Kara Braxton, she's a great player, so I think they can go far this year.

God cannot be reduced to a sample for analysis.

The artist does not illustrate science (but) he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does.

The universe extends beyond the mind of man, and is more complex than the small sample one can study.

When the armistice was declared American forces had fought their way to Sedan.

Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual.

The marvelous thing is that even in studying linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to some degree intelligible to us.

So every day I'm mindful as I watch the Bush crowd extend their sway into policies of every imaginable variety, and over almost every square foot of earth, that the control of the American state is a matter of urgency.

The view of the local scene through the eyes of a native participant in that scene is a different window.

As I write at the end, if we step back and face the enormity of the torrent, then we have taken the first step to imagining what we might want to do about it.

If the scholar feels that he must know everything about any topic, he is in trouble - and will not publish with a clear conscience.

It is also, I would guess, a universal that in all societies people value respectability granted to them.

Of course there may well be particular reasons why Spencer rather than others is dead, as there were also particular reasons why he rather than others made such a stir.

Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation.

We assume, to begin with, that the individual is at least as complex in his internal structure as the language is which he speaks - otherwise, how could he speak a language which is complex?

I wanted a theory that would allow one to live outside the office with the same philosophy one uses inside it.

Thus, in general, in the first instance, the direction of interest in empirical fact will be canalised by the logical structure of the theoretical system.

Moreover, the structure of a theoretical system tells us what alternatives are open in the possible answers to a given question.

Nobody is as good as he thinks he is.

Knowledge is held to be an entirely quantitative affair. The one important thing is to have observed what had not been observed before.

Outward failure may be a manifested variant of inward success.

My book is focused on the power of the American state, not least because the government of the United States governs so much that the case could be made that everybody around the world ought to have a vote in determining some of its policies.

This required the development of a view which allowed one to integrate research with belief, thing with person, fact with aesthetics, knowledge with application of knowledge.

Experimental syntax, of a mathematical type, geared to referential axioms, may help further along these lines - or others not imagined as yet.

The simplest way to see the meaning of the concept of a closed, system in this sense is to consider the example of a system of simultaneous equations.

Again, the only trends that interest the corporate boys and girls are demographic and businesslike. I doubt the think tank reports interest them much.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

It was just exciting to be there, and the atmospheres that we played in were great. That was just really exciting when we were in college.

The fancy term for what America has squandered in the past year and a half or so is legitimacy.

If I were to adopt pure mechanism as a philosophy, there would be no way I could choose to be a scholar.

I have no action plan, and as a writer I don't want to get hung up on the advantages and disadvantages of particular strategies.

The General Staff is naturally divided into five groups, each with its chief who is an assistant to the Chief of the General Staff.