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David Riesman Quotes

1909–2002 United States

David Riesman (September 22, 1909 – May 10, 2002) was a sociologist, attorney, and educator.

United States
Educators
Lawyers
Sociologists

Random David Riesman quote

15 quotes

Etiquette can be at the same time a means of approaching people and of staying clear of them.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

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.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

The mass media are the wholesalers; the peer-groups, the retailers of the communications industry.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

Those who are excluded from meaningful work are, by and large, excluded from meaningful play.

Individualism Reconsidered (1954)

Today the future occupation of all moppets is to be skilled consumers.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

Parents today are the stage managers for the meetings of three- and four-year-olds, just as, in earlier eras, the adults managed marriages.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

The imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality.

Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

America is not only big and rich, it is mysterious; and its capacity for the humorous or ironical concealment of its interests matches that of the legendary inscrutable Chinese.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

Why, I ask, why isn't it possible that advertising as a whole is a fantastic fraud, presenting an image of America taken seriously by no one, least of all by the advertising men who create it?

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

[I]t is no longer clear which way is up even if one wants to rise.

The Lonely Crowd (1950)

The premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality.

Individualism Reconsidered (1954)

Social Science … led us to the fallacy that, since all men have their being in culture and as a result of culture, they owe a debt to that culture which even a lifetime of altruism could not repay.

A spurious democracy has influenced both our research methods (I am sometimes tempted to define “validity” as part of the context of an experiment demanding so little in the way of esoteric gift that any number can play at it, provided they have taken a certain number of courses) and our research subjects (it would be deemed snobbish to investigate only the best people).

Individualism Reconsidered (1954)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: David Riesman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.