Sam Richards Quotes

Mills insisted that a sociologist's proper subject was the intersection of biography and history.

The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden.

I don't want to become a serious, annoying sociologist. I try to regard sociology as a part of everyday life.

I love to study people, and that's basically what sociology is.

Academic sociologists have been trained to conceive of their discipline - sociology - as the scientific study of society, and to remit to the sister discipline of psychology the study of individuals.

Science of Society

I recognized that … there was a science of society as well as botany.

Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

I'm more into human nature than politics. But they're intertwined. Obviously, I live in civilization, so politics are part of my life.

It is our common experience as human beings that the results of social forces seem to admit only of 'probabilistic' predictions.

I admit that the eyes of the intellectually and culturally lively tend to glaze over at the mere mention of sociology, often with ample justification.

I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'

Society is one word, but many things.

The Social Sciences will concern themselves with the rationalization of social control... the control of human behavior.

Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms.

The shoe is very much an X-ray of social comportment.

It's not rocket science. It's social science.

No very sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology.

One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way.

Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature.

The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation.

If it's far away, it's news, but if it's close at home, it's sociology.

We are what make up society.