German - Sociologist | March 1, 1858 - September 28, 1918
The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life.
Georg Simmel
LifeProgressValueOrganization
Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.
RelationshipWillTwoInvolvedEvery
On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself.
LifeTimePersonalityEasyPerson
For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.
PersonalityAccomplishmentLaborMore
Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor.
LaborFirstDivisionEconomicSeats
Every superior personality, and every superior performance, has, for the average of mankind, something mysterious.
PersonalityPerformanceMysterious
For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.
StrangersDistanceReasonGeneral
In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events.
ChangeMindConservativeMoreRhythm
In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief.
LifeFaithBackAcceptBeliefNever
Man's nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered.
NatureGoodManCommonDevelop
The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles.
SmallCircleStrangeWayHistorical
The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations.
ResultPersonGenuineRelationships
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