Sociological Perspective Quotes

It seems to me that you are solving a problem which goes beyond the limits of physiology in too simple a way. Physiology has realized its problem with fortitude, breaking man down into endless actions and counteractions and reducing him to a crossing, a vortex of reflex acts. Let it now permit sociology to restore him as a whole. Sociology will wrest man from the anatomical theatre and return him to history.

One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way.

Critics have a responsibility to put things in a cultural and sociological or political context. That is important.

Sociologically, I think it is the most important thing going on in the world today. Because you can't change people by force. Communism made a great mistake in trying to inflict its beliefs on everybody. People have to find their own understanding, and if you can offer them an example that will inspire, they will come naturally to it. Ananda tries to offer this inspiring example.

Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretical sociologists to act sometimes as though it is not necessary even to study Caesar in order to understand him. Yet we know that the interplay of theory and research makes both for understanding of the specific case and expansion of the general rule.

My rap comes from a sociological standpoint rather than picking a particular side or dogma or ideology. I just want people to be free to do what they want, as long as they don't harm others.

The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this?

I have heard earnest American sociologists say that American children have a right to the divorce experience as an enriching element of an advanced civilisation.

Asking a sociologist to solve a problem is like prescribing an enema for diarrhea.

If you find yourself concentrating on the technology rather than the sociology, you're like the vaudeville character who loses his keys on a dark street and looks for them on the adjacent street because, as he explains, "The light is better there."