Charles Horton Cooley Quotes

• 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.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Nothing, Foreigner

• We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mind, Brave

• Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Age, Success

  Tags in Simplicity, Defect

• To cease to admire is a proof of deterioration.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Admire, Proof

• 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.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Without, Idiot

• One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self-Esteem, Criticism

• A person of definite character and purpose who comprehends our way of thought is sure to exert power over us. He cannot altogether be resisted; because, if he understands us, he can make us understand him, through the word, the look, or other symbol.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Character, Thought, Purpose, Understanding, Relationships

• An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Topics in Success

  Tags in Cannot, Fail, Artist

• 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.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Tags in Conflict

• One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.

  Charles Horton Cooley

• Could anything be more indicative of a slight but general insanity than the aspect of the crowd on the streets of Chicago?

  Charles Horton Cooley

• A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

  Charles Horton Cooley

• If we divine a discrepancy between a man’s words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.

  Charles Horton Cooley

• 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.

  Charles Horton Cooley

• Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.

  Charles Horton Cooley

Charles Horton Cooley (35)

Birth:	17th August, 1864
Death:	7th May, 1929
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Sociologist

About

Charles Horton Cooley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was an American sociologist. He studied and went on to teach economics and sociology at the University of Michigan, and he was a founding member and the eighth president of the American Sociological Association. In 1888, he returned for a Master's degree in political economics, with a minor in sociology. He began teaching economics and sociology at the University in the fall of 1892. Cooley went on to receive a PhD in 1894. His doctoral thesis was The Theory of Transportation in economics.

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