David Riesman Quotes

Which goes to show you, you can make all the laws you want, but you cannot change people's ways. If you must change them, you have to understand that it will take a long time.

I am affected by what is around. I don't think many people would admit that.

If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.

I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity.

Although words exist for the most part for the transmission of ideas, there are some which produce such violent disturbance in our feelings that the role they play in the transmission of ideas is lost in the background.

Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word. Machines won't change human nature.

the scary part is that people don't realize how much they've changed .

If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy.

Words people say not only have a shelf life but have the ability to shape life.

I guess one person can make a difference.

You were born with the power to change others. You change people by the way you treat them. That is what changes the human heart.

Was she terrifyingly beautiful? Was she so ignorant she didn't deserve the truth? Was she also a liar and thus it was something they did together? I don't believe in psychology; which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don't.

Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality.

It's very tough to get yourself around the idea that there could be a mechanism being used or abused to restrict and alter the society in which we live.

What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.

You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself.

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

It's a very painful, eye-opening experience to realize, "Wait a minute, my dad actually doesn't want me to be successful because he's not happy." Whether you call it misery loves company, it's not like parents are bad people. It's a human trait. It's just a thing.

Every human being has an impact on another.

We are the change we have been waiting for.

Build what you want to see in the world.

We have recognized that the world is changing. How your children are behaving, how their friends are behaving. What they consume and what they watch.

As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look round and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.

It doesn't hurt me on a personal level, but it hurts me on a larger level of like, why are people so stupid? Why do we have to go through these unnecessary exercises. Fight crime, don't fight me. If you really want to make a difference don't fight me or Fugazi.

When the movie comes to an end, you are not totally the same person you are when you started the movie.