[G]radually, like so many others in my position, I came to the conclusion that there was a yawning gap between the official word and the practice ...… - Zygmunt Bauman

The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.

As Christopher Marlowe’s Faust learned the hard way, wishing for a moment of bliss to say “the same” indefinitely is guaranteed to procure indefinite commitment to hell instead of indefinite happiness. … A state of rest would not be a state of happiness but of boredom.

Once governments exclude people you can stop them from being protected. Societies begin to manipulate fears about groups. When the welfare state is in crisis we have to be concerned about such a feature of [society]