“We need a laissez faire that will hold fast to the ends of autonomy and freedom of choice; one that will begin not with the imaginary, abstract individual but with the personalities of human beings as they are actually given… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
“The old laissez faire failed because it was based on erroneous premises regarding human behavior. As a theory it failed because it mistook for ineradicable characteristics of individuals qualities that were in fact inseparable from social groups. As a policy it failed because its atomistic propositions were inevitably unavailing against the reality of enlarging masses of insecure individuals. Far from… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share
“I believe it was Napoleon who first sensed the ease with which, in modern society, the illusion of freedom can be created by strategic relaxation of regulations and law on individual thought, provided it is only individual, while all the time fundamental economic and political liberties are being circumscribed. The barriers to the kind of power Napoleon wielded as emperor… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share
“Not the free individual but the lost individual; not Independence but isolation; not self-discovery but self-obsession; not the conquer but to be conquered; these… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
“In a highly popular statement, we are told that the family has progressed from institution to companionship. But, as Ortega y Gasset has written, “people do not live together merely to be together. They live together to do something together”. To suppose that the present family, or any other group, can perpetually vitalize itself through some indwelling affectional tie, in… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share
“A sense of the past is far more basic to the maintenance of freedom than hope for the future. The former is concrete and… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
“The greatest intellectual and moral offense the modern intellectual can be found guilty of is that of seeming to think or act outside what… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
“The historical emphasis upon the individual has been at the expense of the associative and symbolic relationship that must in fact uphold the individual’s own sense of integrity. (…) “When the relation between man and God is subjective, interior (as in Luther) or in tímeles acts and logic (as in Calvin) man’s utter dependence upon God is not mediated through… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share
“Other and more powerful forms of association have existed, but the major moral and psychological influences on the individual’s life have emanated from the family and local community and the church. Within such groups have been engendered the primary types of identification: affection, friendship, prestige, recognition. And within them also have been engendered or intensified the principal incentives of work,… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share
“Marxism, like all other totalitarian movements in our century, must be seen as kind of secular pattern of redemption , designed to bring hope… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
“We need a laissez faire that will hold fast to the ends of autonomy and freedom of choice; one that will begin not with… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
“Genuine freedom is not based upon the negative psychology of release. Its roots are in positive acts of dedication to ends and values. Freedom… — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
“Culture does not exist autonomously; it is set always in the context of social relationships.” — Robert A. Nisbet Copy Share Image
