A biography for Charles Horton Cooleyhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.”
“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.”
“Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.”
“Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.”
“There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.”
“The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.”
“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.”
“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.”
“There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.”
“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.”
“The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.”
“To cease to admire is a proof of deterioration.”
“One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.”