Social Theory Quotes

#1. The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

Noam Chomsky

#2. Come on," said the Director. "You are all completely mad people who mess around with technology and weird social theory for fun until your brains shit themselves and you fall over. Any of you could have done this.

Warren Ellis

#3. Change the instruments and you will change the entire social theory that goes with them

Bruno Latour

#4. Such abstraction which refuses to accept the given universe of facts as the final context of validation, such "transcending" analysis of the facts in the light of their arrested and denied possibilities, pertains to the very structure of social theory.

Herbert Marcuse

#5. I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.

Paul Farmer

#6. The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.

Herbert Marcuse

#7. Others, including those with a social theory influence, talk about securitization primarily in terms of practices, context, and power relations that characterize the construction of threat images.

Thierry Balzacq

#8. Finding Mecca in America weaves social theory and concrete ethnography into a significant contribution on Muslims in the United States, illuminating broader questions about the integration of minority and immigrant groups along the way. This is an important work and a joy to read.

Eboo Patel

#9. I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#10. My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there's a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in black people. The best example is, Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hiphop.

Questlove

#11. As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist

Dalai Lama

#12. The theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare ... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.

Gary L. Francione

#13. Class analysis can thus function not simply as part of scientific theory of interests and conflicts, but of an emancipatory theory of alternatives and social justice as well. Even if socialism is off the historical agenda, the idea of countering the exploitative logic of capitalism is not.

Erik Olin Wright

#14. Social cognitive theory rejects the dichotomous conception of self as agent and self as object. Acting on the environment and acting on oneself entail shifting the perspective of the same agent rather than reifying different selves regulating each other or transforming the self from agent to object

Albert Bandura

#15. A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger
especially at danger in the social sciences
of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.

Rollo May

#16. Healing of the world's woes will not come through this or that social or political theory; not through violent changes in government, but in the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart.

Arthur James Moore

#17. I'm not an intellectual - Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed. Theory derives from action. What our corporate state demands from us is comprehension of the social forces - of history. You

Philip K. Dick

#18. ANARCHISM: - The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

Emma Goldman

#19. On the way from mythology to logistics thought has lost the element of self-reflection and today machinery disables men even as it nurtures them.

Theodor W. Adorno

#20. To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.

Bernard Crick

#21. Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor ... It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.

Emma Goldman

#22. For Marx, 'pure' economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible.

Ernest Mandel

#23. I have resisted the term sociolinguistics for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.

William Labov

#24. Theory and practice are not only interwoven with one's culture but with the responsibility of shaping the environment, of breaking up social complacency, and challenging the power of the status quo.

Samuel Mockbee

#25. If a minister wants to be a man among men he need only to stop creating devotion to abstract ideals which every one accepts in theory and denies in practice, and to agonize about their validity and practicability in the social issues which he and others face in our present civilization.

Reinhold Niebuhr

#26. My theory with the auctions has been to try to make them like a party, like a social event. If people are having a good time, talking with their friends, they're much more likely to bid.

Paul Brown

#27. Creating consent (hegemony) is never a simple act. It is rather the result of the social structures and the cultural patterns that dictates for each group its behavior and for each institutions its practices.

Amine Zidouh

#28. If your political theory requires humanity to "evolve", then you do not have a theory.

A.E. Samaan

#29. If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.

Amartya Sen

#30. For the record, feminism by definition is: 'The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.'

Emma Watson

#31. Free market capitalism is far more than economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility-the highway to the American Dream.

George W. Bush

#32. What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.

John Taylor Gatto

#33. Your network is your destiny, a reality backed up by many studies in the newly emergent fields of social networking and social contagion theory. We are the people we interact with.

Keith Ferrazzi

#34. The problem of political theory is how to combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress, with the degree of social cohesion which is necessary for survival.

Bertrand Russell

#35. Marx made theory ... Lenin applied it with his sense of large-scale social organization ... And Henry Ford made the work of the socialist state possible.

Diego Rivera

#36. And the venality of those Judaized is incapable of explaining anti-Semitism as a social phenomenon, we will call it the anti-Semitic theory.

A. C. Cuza

#37. Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple; the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.

Noam Chomsky

#38. Mitt Romney's primary season embrace of the social and economic agenda of the more rabid elements of his party doomed him, especially the shrill immigration rhetoric and the harshly insensitive theory that no additional sacrifice or contribution should be sought from those at the top.

Eliot Spitzer

#39. private philanthropy is no substitution for hard-fought battles over labour laws and social security, in part because philanthropy can be retracted on a whim, while elected officials, at least in theory, have citizens to answer to.

Linsey McGoey

#40. Evolutionary theory informs our understanding of some frankly inexcusable social behavior and renders it perfectly normal.

Richard K. Morgan

#41. In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy results from diverse sources of information conveyed vicariously and through social evaluation, as well as through direct experience

Albert Bandura

#42. A preoccupation with theory has been a defensive response by academic biographers in this country, I submit, to the condescension of traditional humanists and social scientists pervading higher education for many years.

David Levering Lewis

#43. Internationalism is a social and political theory, a certain concept of how human society ought to be organized, and in particular a concept of how the nations ought to organize their mutual relations.

Christian Lous Lange

#44. It is the shortcomings of game theory (as originally formulated) which force the consideration of the role of ethics, of the dynamics of social structure, and of social structure and of individual psychology in situations of conflict.

Anatol Rapoport

#45. Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated.

G.K. Chesterton

#46. Social Security was always supposed to be basically in theory an insurance program where you pay in and then you get out.

Judd Gregg

#47. If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power.

Imre Lakatos

#48. By abstaining from all definite content, whether as formal logic and theory of science or as the legend of Being beyond all beings, philosophy declared its bankruptcy regarding concrete social goals.

Theodor Adorno

#49. All social life is essentially practical. All mysterious which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of the practice.

Karl Marx

#50. Social power is at stake in theory-making, but the workings of this power are often unacknowledged -- and overdetermined.

-- Making Magic, p. 23

Randall Styers

#51. The theory that everyone acts from self-interest, direct or indirect, is psychologically unsound ... Throughout history ... there have been millions of men and women with some sort of Humanist philosophy who have consciously given up their lives for a social ideal.

Corliss Lamont

#52. Psychology cannot tell people how they ought to live their lives. It can however, provide them with the means for effecting personal and social change.

Albert Bandura

#53. In Freud's theory, the wish-producing, fear-generating power of these body parts lies within them, not, with their strategic position within a historically specific, male-dominant, phallus-favoring, social organization of powers, bodies, and symbols.

Jonathan Ned Katz

#54. The concept of "social justice," which purports to promote equality among the lines of gender and ethnicity, is based on intersectional feminist theory. Per the theory, certain classes of people are naturally oppressors, while others are victims. There's nothing more divisive than that.

Ian Miles Cheong

#55. Social dynamic theory is philosophy, not politics. There can't be only one correct answer, or there would only be one book. Sharon L Reddy, Worldcon, 1995.

Sharon L. Reddy

#56. I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

Alexis De Tocqueville