20th-century Social Scientist Quotes

Doreen Massey (geographer)

Sherry Turkle

Ithiel de Sola Pool

Amir Farmanesh

Nicholas Lore

In no system which shows mental characteristics can any part have unilateral control over the whole. In other words, the mental characteristics of the system are imminent, not in some part, but in the system as a whole.

Gregory Bateson

The secret of creating anything new in your life consists of creating new commitments and then holding the tiller to your new course until it becomes established as a behavior.

The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.

Managers today come up against a few more communication barriers. One is the pressure of time. Listening carefully takes time, and managers have little of that to spare. In today's business culture especially, with its emphasis on speed, already pressed managers may give short shrift to the slower art of one-on-one communication.

Fritz Roethlisberger

[The Nazis] handed out billions in price subsidies to farmers…. As early as December 1939, a high-ranking financial administrator complained that the privileging of farmers 'is in many case so grotesque that it can scarcely be kept secret from the rest of the populace, segments of which are being called on to make real sacrifices.'

Today, cultural and legal changes mean that individuals expect and demand a voice in decisions that affect their lives and often they have the power to undermine those decisions if they aren't allow their voice.

Daniel Yankelovich

He is a visionary leader who has built a tremendously successful business over the decades by hiring talented people, developing a shared plan, and then unleashing them to carry it out. That's what real leaders do, and I believe that he will do the same thing as president.

Steven W. Mosher

The Telephone will democratize hierarchic relations.

Ithiel de Sola Pool

Iranians expect that the lifting of restrictions will result in tangible improvements in their lives in less than a year after a deal is reached. There exists a very strong correlation between these assumptions/expectations and support for the deal.

Much of life for many people, even in the heart of the First World, still consists of waiting in a bus shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes.

Doreen Massey (geographer)

Although advice on how and when to draw graphs is available, we have no theory of statistical graphics.

Stephen Fienberg