Richard Sennett Quotes

#1. There is something more here than embarrassment at being praised. The strengths 'I' have are not admissible to the arena of ability where they are socially useful; for once admitted, 'I'
my real self
would no longer have them.

Richard Sennett

#2. Electronic communication is one means by which the very idea of public life has been put to an end.

Richard Sennett

#3. We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.

Richard Sennett

#4. Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.

Richard Sennett

#5. To the absolutist in every craftsman, each imperfection is a failure; to the practitioner, obsession with perfection seems a perception for failure.

Richard Sennett

#6. But still he keeps working with a will; that's the craftsman in him. (pg-265)

Richard Sennett

#7. The past was in them, still disturbing but no longer a governing history; the trauma strengthened the convictions they possessed about how to lead their lives.

Richard Sennett

#8. The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.

Richard Sennett

#9. The pleasures of relaxed chat, of casual conversation, encourage the ethnographer in everyone

Richard Sennett

#10. The single most pressing earthly obligation of every medieval artisan was the establishment of a good personal reputation.11

Richard Sennett

#11. Tocqueville saw the brute repression of deviants as a necessity if men were to keep convincing themselves of their collective dignity through their collective sameness. The "poets of society," the men who challenged the norms, would have to be silenced so that sameness could be maintained.

Richard Sennett

#12. ISBN 978-0-300-11633-5

Richard Sennett

#13. Authority is itself inherently an act of imagination.

Richard Sennett

#14. Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

Richard Sennett

#15. Like the Roman town grid, the New York plan was laid down on largely empty land, a city designed in advance of being inhabited; if the Romans consulted the heavens for guidance in this effort, the city fathers of New York consulted the banks.

Richard Sennett

#16. You can't understand how wine is made simply by drinking lots of it.

Richard Sennett