Nicholas A. Christakis Quotes

The social sciences are usually concerned with groups of persons rather than individual persons. The behavior of individuals, being free, is unpredictable.

It will, of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common weal.

I have this extraordinary curiosity about all subjects of the natural and human world and the interaction between the physical sciences and the social sciences.

I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'

Science of Society

The sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other;

Egocentrism appears to us as a form of behavior intermediate between purely individual and socialized behavior.

In the past 20 years scientists from very diverse disciplines - anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, psychologists - have all moved to a much more hopeful, optimistic view of human nature.

The methods of the natural sciences cannot be applied to human behavior because this behaviorlacks the peculiarity that characterizes events in the field of the natural sciences, viz., regularity.

I think sociologists are among the best at thinking about emergence, of thinking about the ways that the society is more than the sum of the individuals. And I've found that much of the wisest writing on human social nature comes from sociology and anthropology, not from my own field of social psychology.

The tendencies are considerably weaker in the natural sciences, which, for the past several centuries, have survived and flourished through such constant challenge, and therefore, at best, seek to encourage it. Serving the status quo in political and socioeconomic realms is a different matter.

I have never suggested any principled difference between the natural and social sciences.

The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by theopulent, can be enjoyed by all.

It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science.

As long as we place millions of Indians at the centre of our thought process, as long as we think of their welfare, their future, their opportunities for self-realisation we are on the right track.

There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers.

No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers.

Eight hours daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep.

Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.

Modern science is a catalyst agent to fulfil the needs of humankind. We must ensure that it reaches to poorest of the poor.

We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen to believe that we are all monsters.

Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolate by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened.

The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare.

science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.