David Riesman Quotes

You know, our sense of individuality is just the number one target of civilization.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.

All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality.

All men are created equal in one respect, at least, and that is their desire to be unequal.

Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

I know that many people kill off their real personality just to fit into this society, but why do we have to compromise? I never understood that. I decided to try to be myself and to live by my own values rather than those of others.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

Brahmins do not have the right to call themselves Indians … If India has to become a modern nation, … It has to establish an egalitarian relationship between Brahmins and the lower castes.

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.

The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization.

Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart.

Pellet: “Men are all alike” Wendle: “Only some more than others”

Liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result.

Society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

The tensions between order and liberty, between opportunity and social justice will always be there, but that’s freedom.