List of David Riesman Quotes

One Of The Things People Are Fleeing When They Leave The City Is The Need Either To Reject People Who Are Less Well Educated Than Themselves, Or To Accept Them With All That Implies For Their Children's Education And Future Placement In The Society.

Mass Entertainment In America Has Been Dominated For A Long Time By The Mode Of Documentary Realism.

There Has Been A Change In Heroes Within The Working-class Community

In Preindustrial Cultures Leisure Is Scarcely A Burden Or A "problem" Because It Is Built Into The Ritual And Ground Plan Of Life For Which People Are Conditioned In Childhood; Often They Possess A Relatively Timeless Attitude Toward Events.

The Closest Thing We Have To The Traditional Ideology Of The Leisure Class Is A Group Of Artists And Intellectuals Who Regard Their Work As Play And Their Play As Work.

A Spurious Democracy Has Influenced Both Our Research Methods (i Am Sometimes Tempted To Define "validity" As Part Of The Context Of An Experiment Demanding So Little In The Way Of Esoteric Gift That Any Number Can Play At It, Provided They Have Taken A Certain Number Of Courses) And Our Research Subjects (it Would Be Deemed Snobbish To Investigate Only The Best People).

Though Top Executives May Work As Hard As Ever-in Part Perhaps Because, Being Trained In An Earlier Day, They Can Hardly Help Doing So-their Subordinates Are Somewhat Less Work-minded.

The Situation Of The Factory Worker Today Is Reminiscent In Certain Respects Of That Of The Nineteenth-century Capitalist Whose Wife Dragged Him Reluctantly Toward "culture" And Away From His "materialistic" Preoccupations.

Drivers In A Traffic Jam, Frustrated By Each Others Presence, Are Not The Most Amiable Of Men.

There Is Evidence That Young Men In The Big Law Firms, Although They Still Work Harder Than Most Of Their Clients, Do Not Glory In Putting In Night Work And Weekend Hours As They Once Did.

The Premonition Of Death May For Many Be A Stimulus To Novelty Of Experience: The Imminence Of Death Serves To Sweep Away The Inessential Preoccupations For Those Who Do Not Flee From The Thought Of Death Into Triviality.

It Is Among The Less Privileged Groups Relatively New To Leisure And Consumption That The Zest For Possessions Retains Something Of Its Pristine Energy.