Quote of the day.

[kat_lair]

"The first fruit of this imagination – and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it – is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances. In many ways, it is a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of man’s capacities for supreme effort or willing degradation, for agony or glee, for pleasurable brutality or the sweetness of reason. But in our time we have come to know that the limits of ‘human nature’ are frighteningly broad. We have come to know that every individual lives, from one generation to the next, in some society; that he lives out a biography, and that he lives it out within some historical sequence. By the fact of his living he contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of this society and to the course of its history, even as he is made by society and by its historical push and shove.”

 

Mills, C.W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Comments

[athenejen]

♥

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

Hee, that's pretty much my reaction to this quote :)

[iniq.livejournal.com]

This is on my list of books I'm using for my thesis. ♥

Quote-sharing minds thinking alike? ;)

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm not using that for my thesis directly but it was too good a quote not to mark down and share.

Oh, and I like your quote too. Yeah, saying the same thing in different words... geek-love!

[iniq.livejournal.com]

In that same vein is Pierre Lecomte Du Noüy (whom I will never properly cite. Apparently one files him under "D" for du Noüy. Lecomte doesn't seem much like a middle name, though.). I'm currently going through Human Destiny, hoping to get another view on that whole man and society thing. I'm reading a German translation from 1948 and I've sneezed 100+ times already. :/ Dr Sheldon Cooper would hate me for not using disposable reading gloves. ;p I wouldn't mind a breathing mask, though!

You're so right. Some quotes are just so beautiful they have to be shared.
♥