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.
Category Archive: Charles Horton Cooley
To cease to admire is a proof of deterioration.
There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.
Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise.
The general fact is that 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.
The bashful are always aggressive at heart.
A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
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.
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 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.