Sociology is the study of society human actions and social interactions.
It seeks to understand societies’ structures and functions and how individuals and groups interact.
Sociology quotes offer insights into society showing the fascination with studying sociology, philosophy, psychology and economics.
These fields all focus on human nature and behavior. Sociology in particular delves into the behaviors of men and women in society.
These quotes reflect on how people behave change and interact within their cultural natural work and social environments.
They highlight the richness of knowledge gained from studying society emphasizing the importance of sociology in understanding human existence.
This collection of diverse sociology quotes aims to inspire and empower readers.
Let’s get started.
Sociology Quotes
Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this? ~ C. Wright Mills.
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. ~ B. F. Skinner.
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology. ~ W. H. Auden.
The internet is the Petri dish of humanity, We can’t control what grows in it, but we don’t have to watch either. ~ Tiffany Madison.
Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. ~ Aristotle.
The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Sociology exacts it. ~ Nadine Gordimer.
Historically, sociology has its main roots in politics and philosophy of history. ~ Morris Ginsberg.
In the case of sociology however, we are always walking on hot coals, and the things we discuss are alive, they’re not dead and buried. ~ Pierre Bourdieu.
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. ~ Robert Heinlein.
I really want to go back to school and finish up my sociology degree. ~ Alicia Sacramone.
One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often. ~ Erich Fromm.
Best Sociology Quotes
I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we’ve had in a long time. Its sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America. ~ Quincy Jones.
Education is free. Freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the condition fixed by law and under the supreme control of the state. ~ Karl Marx.
All theory in modernity in sociology suggests that the more modernity there is, the less religion. In my theory, we can realize that this is wrong; atheism is only one belief system among many. ~ Ulrich Beck.
Good sociology is sociological work that produces meaningful descriptions of organizations and… proposals for their improvement or removal. ~ Howard. S. Becker.
Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors ~ ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics.. ~ Sam Harris.
If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of psychiatrists couch. ~ Marshall McLuhan.
Sociology is the science with the greatest number of methods and the least results. ~ Henri Poincare.
Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology. ~ Brian Solis.
The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. ~ Thorstein Bunde Veblen
Sociology studies man as a social organization, political science is a more specialized science than sociology. ~ R.N. Gilchrist.
With sociology, one can do anything and call it work. ~ Malcolm Bradbury.
Sociology should… be thought of as a science of action – of the ultimate common value element in its relations to the other elements of action. ~ Talcott Parsons
Quotes about Sociology
It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. ~ Stephen R. Covey.
Happy is the people that is without history. And thrice is the people without sociology. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson.
History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce’s view of Everyman as a victim. ~ Robert Anton Wilson.
Man is a social animal formed to please in society. ~ Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy. ~ Jean Baudrillard.
Society is the union of men and not the men themselves. ~ Charles Louis de Secondat
People who wouldn’t think of talking with their mouths full often speak with their heads empty. ~ American Proverb
Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions. ~ Richard Russo
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department. ~ Thomas Sowell.
I was a sociology major and it had nothing to do necessarily with law…[I] choose something that I was passionate about or something that I cared about. ~ Michelle Obama.
My students often ask me, ‘What is Sociology?’. And I tell them, ‘It’s the study of the way which human beings are shaped by things that they don’t see.’ ~ Sam Richards.
Famous Sociology Quotes
The sociological context of the times [affects education]. Some people call it television culture—you’re supposed to be able to get everything in 30 seconds, a sort of quiz-show attitude. ~ James Alfred Van Allen
Kids don’t remember what you try to teach. They remember what you are. ~ Jim Henson.
Modern sociology is virtually an attempt to take up the larger program of social analysis… prevailing interest in the technique of the production of wealth. ~ Albion Woodbury Small.
Sociology was born of the modern ardor to improve society. ~ Albion Woodbury Small.
Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate – and quickly. ~ Robert Heinlein
I love to study people, and that’s basically what sociology is. ~ Kamaru Usman.
The confusion in the social sciences is moral as well as scientific, political as well as intellectual. ~ C. Wright Mills.
People who know little talk much; people who know much talk little. ~ American Proverb
Most institutions demand unqualified faith, but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. ~ Robert K. Merton.
The weeping philosopher too often impairs his eyesight by his woe, and becomes unable from his tears to see the remedies for the evils which he deplores. Thus it will often be found that the man of no tears is the truest philanthropist, as he is the best physician who wears a cheerful face, even in the worst of cases. ~ Charles Mackay
The two poles of social and political philosophy seem necessarily to be organization or anarchy; man’s intellect or the forces of nature. ~ Henry Brooks Adams
While economics is about how people make choices, sociology is about how they don’t have any choice to make. ~ Bertrand Russell.
Those who love fairy-tales do not like it when people speak of the innate tendencies in mankind toward aggression, destruction, and, in addition, cruelty. ~ Sigmund Freud
No sociologist, for instance, should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time. ~ Max Weber.
I wasn’t a great student; I was lazy. But when I was in sociology class, I listened. ~ Eric Stonestreet.
Inspiring Sociology Quotes
The most elementary communication is not possible without some degree of conformity to the ‘conventions’ of the symbolic system. ~ Talcott Parsons.
The meaning of the evolution of culture is no longer a riddle to us. It must present to us the struggle between Eros and Death, between the instincts of life and the instincts of destruction, as it works itself out in the human species. ~ Sigmund Freud
The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden. ~ Pierre Bourdieu.
The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society–and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding. ~ William H. Whyte
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. ~ Karl Marx.
Academic sociologists have been trained to conceive of their discipline ~ sociology ~ as the scientific study of society and remit to the sister discipline of psychology the study of individuals. ~ Richard Wall.
If it’s far away, it’s news, but if it’s close at home, it’s sociology. ~ James Reston.
It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed. ~ Emile Durkheim.
Society is as ancient as the world. ~ Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
The ambitious bullfrog puffed and puffed until he burst. ~ American Proverb
Many a person thinks he is hard-boiled when he is only half-baked. ~ American Proverb
Socialism is not science, sociology in miniature: it is cry of pain. ~ Emile Durkheim.
To teach the theory of the state to men who have not learnt the first principles of sociology is like teaching astronomy or thermodynamics to men who have not learnt Newton’s Laws of Motion. ~ Giddings.
Great Sociology Quotes
Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. ~ C. Wright Mills.
Sociology seems to have missed every intellectually promising boat in the last half-century. ~ Pierre L. Van Den Berghe.
Society is itself a kind of organism, an enormously powerful one, but unfortunately not a very wise one. ~ Isaac Asimov.
I’m a huge feminist, I majored in sociology at college, and I care about what I put into the world. ~ Beanie Feldstein.
We need to explore the possibility that homosexual bonding may be a biological mechanism. ~ Edward O. Wilson.
In science, when human behavior enters the equation, things go non-linear. That’s why physics is easy and sociology is hard. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
The first and most fundamental rule is: consider social facts as things. ~ Emile Durkheim.
A cardinal American virtue, ‘ambition,’ promotes a cardinal American vice, ‘deviant behavior’. ~ Robert King Merton.
Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future. ~ Charles Mackay.
