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Culture has been distinguished from the other elements of action by the fact that it is intrinsically transmissible from one action system to another from personality to personality by learning and from social system to social system by diffusion. This is because culture is constituted by "ways of orienting and acting," these ways being "embodied in" meaningful symbols.

— Talcott Parsons Toward a general theory of action (1951)

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More quotes by Talcott Parsons

Ideology is a system of beliefs, held in common by the members of a collectivity.

The social system (1951)

The most elementary communication is not possible without some degree of conformity to the “conventions” of the symbolic system.

The social system (1951)

A social system is a mode of organization of action elements relative to the persistence or ordered processes of change of the interactive patterns of a plurality of individual actors.

The social system (1951)

The functions of the family in a highly differentiated society are not to be interpreted as functions directly on behalf of the society, but on behalf of personality.

Robert Freed Bales (1956)

As a formal analytical point of reference, primacy of orientation to the attainment of a specific goal is used as the defining characteristic of an organization which distinguishes it from other types of social systems.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Talcott Parsons (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.