Pitirim Sorokin Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

The organism of the Western society and culture seems to be undergoing one of the deepest and most significant crises of its life. The crisis is far greater than the ordinary; its depth is unfathomable, its end not yet in sight, and the whole of the Western society is involved in it. It is the crisis of a Sensate culture, now in its overripe stage, the culture that has dominated the Western World during the last five centuries. It is also the crisis of a contractual (capitalistic) society associated with it. In this sense we are experiencing one of the sharpest turns in the historical road.

Pitirim Sorokin
The resort to human flesh, often after months of ever-increasing hunger pangs, appeared to be an animal-like reaction without painful emotional overtones.

Pitirim Sorokin
Any Organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

Pitirim Sorokin
Man is a conscious, rational thinker and a supra-conscious creator genius.

Pitirim Sorokin
Life, even the hardest life, is the most beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous treasure in the world.

Pitirim Sorokin
Are there quantitative aspects to the phenomena of war that can be counted? Evidently!

Pitirim Sorokin
Only the power of unbounded love practiced in regard to all human beings can defeat the forces of interhuman strife, and can prevent the pending extermination of man by man on this planet. Without love, no armament, no war, no diplomatic machinations, no coercive police force, no school education, no economic or political measures, not even hydrogen bombs can prevent the pending catastrophe.

Pitirim Sorokin
[In-group exclusivism has] killed more human beings and destroyed more cities and villages than all the epidemics, hurricanes, storms, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions taken together. It has brought upon mankind more suffering than any other catastrophe.

Pitirim Sorokin
Either the conscious intellect is impotent, or is not sufficiently strong, or is not the factor positively connected with altruistic phenomenon generally or their sublime form particularly.

Pitirim Sorokin
Hate begets hate, violence engenders violence, hypocrisy is answered by hypocrisy, war generates war, and love creates love.

Pitirim Sorokin
The most effective and most accessible way to acquire the maximum of constructive power is to love truly and wisely.

Pitirim Sorokin
Any science, at any moment of its historical existence, contains not only truth but also much that is half-truth, sham-truth, and plain error.

Pitirim Sorokin
Love is the supreme value around which all moral values can be integrated into one ethical system valid for the whole of humanity.

Pitirim Sorokin