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One of the peculiarities of the traditional human self-image is that people often speak and think of individuals and societies as if these were two phenomena existing separately—of which, moreover, one is often considered "real" and the other "unreal"—instead of two different aspects of the same human being.

— Norbert Elias The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (1939)

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More quotes by Norbert Elias

I wish you all the pleasurable excitement one can have without hurting others and one's own dignity.

If the present study has any significance at all, this results not least from its opposition to this mingling of what is and what ought to be, of scientific analysis with ideals.

The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (1939)

A heightened control of the affects, developed in society and learned by the individual, and above all a heightened degree of autonomous affect control, was needed in order for the world-picture centred on the earth and the people living on it to be overcome by one which, like the heliocentric world-picture, agreed better with the observable facts but was at first far less satisfying emotionally; for it removed human beings from their position at the centre of the universe and placed them on one of many planets circling about the centre.

The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (1939)

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