Charles Horton Cooley Quotes

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
Charles Horton Cooley

Art, Success, Cannot

Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.
Charles Horton Cooley

Society, Art, Cannot

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.
Charles Horton Cooley

Work, Mind, Tired

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
Charles Horton Cooley

Talent, Genius, Mediocrity

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.
Charles Horton Cooley

Freedom, Government, Human

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.
Charles Horton Cooley

Nothing, Everything, May

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.
Charles Horton Cooley

God, Failure, Humanity

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.
Charles Horton Cooley

Good, Character, Words

The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.
Charles Horton Cooley

Society, Another, Facts

The bashful are always aggressive at heart.
Charles Horton Cooley

Heart, Aggressive, Bashful

The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse.
Charles Horton Cooley

Mind, Place, Hermit

To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.
Charles Horton Cooley

Live, Past, Self

As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.
Charles Horton Cooley

Live, Eyes, Social

Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.
Charles Horton Cooley

Best, Feeling, Country

Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.
Charles Horton Cooley

Him, Find, Trouble

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.
Charles Horton Cooley

Freedom, Same, General

Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise.
Charles Horton Cooley

End, Means, Compromise

So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.
Charles Horton Cooley

Freedom, Far, Means

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.
Charles Horton Cooley

Time, Human, Control

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.
Charles Horton Cooley

Life, Great, Place

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.
Charles Horton Cooley

Life, Struggle, Self

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.
Charles Horton Cooley

Life, Power, Open

There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.
Charles Horton Cooley

Time, Seem, Hardly

There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.
Charles Horton Cooley

Life, Point, Surface

There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to 'Americanize' him.
Charles Horton Cooley

Children, Nothing, Him

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Sociologist

Born: 1866

Died: 1928

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