Daniel Bell Quotes

Crime is a form of "unorganized" class struggle, and the lowest groups in the society have always committed a disproportionate number of crimes.

Modern culture is defined by this extraordinary freedom to ransack the world storehouse and to engorge any and every style it comes upon.

The one thing that would utterly destroy the new capitalism is the serious practice of deferred gratification.

The democratization of genius is made possible by the fact while one can quarrel with judgments, one cannot quarrel with feelings.

Nihilism, then, is the end process of rationalism. It is man's self conscious will to destroy his past and control his future. It is modernity at its extreme.

Every society seeks to establish a set of meanings through which people can relate themselves to the world.

It is important to realize that the market economy, though it is associated historically with the rise of modern private capitalism, is as a mechanism not necessarily limited to that system.

Religions grow out of the deepest needs of individuals sharing a common awakening, and are not created by "engineers of the soul."

Where religions fail, cults appear.

When a person is confirmed by others, there has to be some sign of recognition.

No one can buy his share of "clean air" in the market; one has to use communal mechanisms in order to deal with pollution.

The demand for group rights will widen in the society, because social life increasingly becomes organized on a group basis.

The discussion of any society risks seduction by what is transient and tumultuous.

Television, as the most "public" of media, has its limits.

Gadgets can be engineered, programs can be designed, institutions can be built, but belief has an organic quality, and it cannot be called into being by fiat. Once a faith is shattered, it takes a long time to grow again - for its soil is experience - and to become effective again.