Peter L. Berger Quotes
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The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.
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We have as many lives as we have points of view.
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The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude.
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Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.
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There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved.
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The basic contentions of the argument of this book are implicit in its title and sub-title, namely, that reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyse the process in which this occurs.
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It will be enough, for our purposes, to define 'reality' as a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our own volition (we cannot 'wish them away'), and to define 'knowledge' as the certainty that phenomena are real and that they possess specific characteristics.
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Life-expectancies of lower-class and upper-class vary …society determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall live…
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Habitualization carries with it the important psychological gain that choices are narrowed… the background of habitualized activity opens up a foreground for deliberation and innovation which demand a higher level of attention.
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If the cultural elite has its way, the U.S. will be much more like Europe.
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Social order is a human product, or more precisely, an ongoing human production.
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In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.
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Without proposing an evolutionary scheme for such types, it is safe to say that mythology represents the most archaic form of universe-maintenance, as indeed it represents the most archaic form of legitimation generally.
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Perhaps some little boys consumed with curiosity to watch their maiden aunts in the bathroom later become inveterate sociologists. This is quite uninteresting. What interests us is the curiosity that grips any sociologist in front of a closed door behind which there are human voices.
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Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally.
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I shall admit frankly that, among the academic diversions available today, I consider sociology as a sort of 'royal game'.
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The game of sociology goes on in a spacious playground.
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The social stock of knowledge differentiates reality by degrees of familiarity... my knowledge of my own occupation and its world is very rich and specific, while I have only very sketchy knowledge of the occupational worlds of others.
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It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term.
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We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.
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Society determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall live. This determination may be institutionally programmed in the operation of social controls, as in the institution of law. Society can maim and kill. Indeed, it is in its power over life and death that it manifests its ultimate control over the individual.
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The most important gain is that each member of society will be able to predict the other’s actions. Concomitantly, the interaction of both becomes predictable… Many actions are possible on a low level of attention. Each action of one is no longer a source of astonishment and potential danger to the other.
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Some people think that as the Chinese economy becomes more and more capitalistic it will inevitably become more democratic.
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The problem with liberal Protestantism in America is not that it has not been orthodox enough, but that it has lost a lot of religious substance.