Charles Horton Cooley Quotes
There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.
A strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix the eye and fascinate the mind.
One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.
Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.
The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.
As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.
To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.
The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.
Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.
Form the habit of making decisions when your spirit is fresh...to let dark moods lead is like choosing cowards to command armies.
No matter what a man does, he is not fully sane or human unless there is a spirit of freedom in him, a soul unconfined by purpose and larger than the practicable world.
A cat cares for you only as a source of food, security and a place in the sun.
Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.
The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.
To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.
The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.
The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.
When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him.
We are born to action and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.
There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to "Americanize" him.
The most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.
A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.
Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.
Could anything be more indicative of a slight but general insanity than the aspect of the crowd on the streets of Chicago?
It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general.
Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.
Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise.
To desire to be an artist is to desire to be a complete man in respect to some one function, to realize yourself utterly. A man is a poor thing who is content not to be an artist.
There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.
Freedom is the opportunity for right development, for development in accordance with the progressive ideal of life that we have in conscience.
The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.
To retire to the monastery, or the woods, or the sea, is to escape from the sharp suggestions that spur on ambition.
We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.
It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.
Selfishness of the stable or rigid sort is as a rule more bitterly resented than the more fickle variety, chiefly, no doubt, because, having more continuity and purpose, it is more formidable.
When we hate a person, with an intimate, imaginative, human hatred, we enter into his mind, or sympathize -- any strong interest will arouse the imagination and create some sort of sympathy.
To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it.
A talent somewhat above mediocrity shrewd and not too sensitive is more likely to rise in the world than genius which is apt to be perturbable and to wear itself out before fruition.
Form the habit of making decisions when your spirit is fresh ... to let dark moods lead is like choosing cowards to command armies.
I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.