“The cultural situation in America today (and indeed in all Western societies) is determined by the cultural earthquake of the nineteen-sixties, the consequences of which are very much in evidence. What began as a counter-culture only some thirty years ago… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
“In sum, the actor identifies with the socially objectivated typifications of conduct in actu, but re-establishes distance from them as he reflects about his… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
In acute suffering the need for meaning is as strong or stronger than the need for happiness. — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
In all advanced industrial societies, education has become the single most important vehicle of upward mobility. — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
“Different objects present themselves to consciousness as constituents of different spheres of reality. I recognize the fellowmen I must deal with in the course of everyday life as pertaining to a reality quite different from the disembodied figures that appear in my dreams. The two sets of objects introduce quite different tensions into my consciousness and I am attentive to… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share
F. A. Hayek is probably the most prominent advocate of capitalism in the present period. — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
India is the most religious country in the world, Sweden is the most secular country in the world, and America is a country of… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
“It is in the legitimation of death that the transcending potency of symbolic universes manifests itself most clearly, and the fundamental terror-assuaging character of the ultimate legitimations of the paramount reality of everyday life is revealed. The primacy of the social objectivations of everyday life can retain its subjective plausibility only if it is constantly protected against terror. On the… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share
An economy oriented toward production for market exchange provides the optimal conditions for long-lasting and ever-expanding productive capacity based on modern technology. — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism,… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share Image
On the one hand, man is a body, in the same way that this may be said of every other animal organism. On the other hand, man has a body. That is, man experiences himself as an entity that is not identical with his body, but that, on the contrary, has that body at its disposal. In other words, man's… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share
“One of the traits of sophistication is the capacity to cross borders between different cultural relevancies. Humor is often, intentionally or not, the result if not the very technique of such border-crossing. Much of Jewish humor reflects a long history, perhaps all the way back to the Exodus, of Jews migrating between cultures. ... American Jewish humor functioned as a… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share
“All human activity is subject to habitualization. Any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be reproduced with an economy of effort and which, ipso facto, is apprehended by its performer as that pattern. Habitualization further implies that the action in question may be performed again in the future in the same manner and… — Peter L. Berger Copy Share
