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Quotes from The Lonely Crowd — David Riesman

1909–2002 United States

← All quotes by David Riesman

10 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)

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)

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)

Attribution

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