Georg Simmel Quotes

• The first internal relation that is essential to a secret society is the reciprocal confidence of its members.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Confidence, Society

• The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Enormous, Organization, Things

• The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Historical, Formation

• In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Metropolitan, Rhythm, Events

• On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Personality, Consciousness

• Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Personal, Relationship

• Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Secrecy, Temptation

• The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sophisticated, Person, Relationships

• Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Economic, Labor

• For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Positive

  Tags in Stranger, Relation

• Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Justice, Life, Respect

• Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Individuals, Relationship

• The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Contemporary, Social, Structure

• The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Modern, Problems

• For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ourselves, Opportunities, Development

• Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Secrecy, Revelation

• Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Modern, Culture

• In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Belief, Life

  Tags in Faith

• Man’s nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Man

• For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.

  Georg Simmel

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Strangers

Georg Simmel (26)

Birth:	1st March, 1858
Death:	28th September, 1918
Nationality:	German
Profession:	Philosopher, Sociologist

About

Georg Simmel was born in Berlin, Germany. He was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from University of Berlin in 1881. He wrote several books include: On Social Differentiation, Problems of Philosophy of History, Introduction to the Science of Ethics, The Problems of Sociology, The Philosophy of Money, and The View of Life.

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