Daniel Bell quotes

The relationship between a civilization's socio-economic structure and its culture is perhaps the most complicated of all problems for the sociologist. (Daniel Bell)
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. View quote
Daniel Bell
When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults. View quote
Daniel Bell
The intellectual takes as a starting point his self and relates the world to his own sensibilities; the scientist accepts an existing field of knowledge and seeks to map out the unexplored terrain. View quote
Daniel Bell
I am too weary to listen, too angry to hear. View quote
Daniel Bell
... Art is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. View quote
Daniel Bell
Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism. View quote
Daniel Bell
The demand for group rights will widen in the society, because social life increasingly becomes organized on a group basis. View quote
Daniel Bell
Crime is a form of "unorganized" class struggle, and the lowest groups in the society have always committed a disproportionate number of crimes. View quote
Daniel Bell
Television, as the most "public" of media, has its limits. View quote
Daniel Bell
The one thing that would utterly destroy the new capitalism is the serious practice of deferred gratification. (Daniel Bell)
Every society seeks to establish a set of meanings through which people can relate themselves to the world. View quote
Daniel Bell
No one can buy his share of "clean air" in the market; one has to use communal mechanisms in order to deal with pollution. View quote
Daniel Bell
If the language of art is not accessible to ordinary language and ordinary experience, how can it be accessible to ordinary people? View quote
Daniel Bell
What makes the spectacle of Western bourgeois society so repulsive is the waste and squander of resources on needless products of status or display (e. g., the large, heavy automobile; the extravagant packaging of consumer items) for the sake of consumption. View quote
Daniel Bell
Today, the culture can hardly, if at all, reflect the society in which people live. View quote
Daniel Bell
When a person is confirmed by others, there has to be some sign of recognition. View quote
Daniel Bell
Modern culture is defined by this extraordinary freedom to ransack the world storehouse and to engorge any and every style it comes upon. View quote
Daniel Bell
The democratization of genius is made possible by the fact while one can quarrel with judgments, one cannot quarrel with feelings. View quote
Daniel Bell
No one "voted in" the market economy and the industrial revolution, but today issues of direction of the economy, costs, redress, priorities, and goals all have become matters of conscious and debated social policy. View quote
Daniel Bell
It is equally clear that what an individual often wants for himself (such as an open highway) in the aggregate becomes a nightmare. (Daniel Bell)
That fabulous polymath Samuel Johnson maintained that no man in his right mind ever read a book through from beginning to end. View quote
Daniel Bell
The discussion of any society risks seduction by what is transient and tumultuous. View quote
Daniel Bell
The virtue of the market is that it disperses responsibility. View quote
Daniel Bell
Where religions fail, cults appear. View quote
Daniel Bell