Peter L. Berger

“MAN OCCUPIES A PECULIAR position in the animal kingdom.1Unlike the other higher mammals, he has no species-specific environment,2 no environment firmly structured…

— Peter L. Berger

“As A and B interact, in whatever manner, typifications will be produced quite quickly. A watches B perform. He attributes motives to…

— Peter L. Berger

“Some roles have no functions other than this symbolic representation of the institutional order as an integrated totality, others take on this…

— Peter L. Berger

There is an intrinsic linkage between socialism and economic inefficiency.

— Peter L. Berger

“Human existence is, ab initio, an ongoing externalization. As man externalizes himself, he constructs the world into which he externalizes himself. In…

— Peter L. Berger

“As long as the nascent institutions are constructed and maintained only in the interaction of A and B, their objectivity remains tenuous,…

— Peter L. Berger

He who sups with the devil had better have a long spoon. The devilry of modernity has its own magic: The [believer]…

— Peter L. Berger

Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead…

— Peter L. Berger

“Externalization and objectivation are moments in a continuing dialectical process. The third moment in this process, which is internalization (by which the…

— Peter L. Berger

“I also know, of course, that the others have a perspective on this common world that is not identical with mine. My…

— Peter L. Berger

Institutions provide procedures through which human conduct is patterned, compelled to go, in grooves deemed desirable by society. And this trick is…

— Peter L. Berger

“Roles appear as soon as a common stock of knowledge containing reciprocal typifications of conduct is in process of formation, a process…

— Peter L. Berger

Unlike puppets we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been…

— Peter L. Berger

When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which…

— Peter L. Berger

“The cultural situation in America today (and indeed in all Western societies) is determined by the cultural earthquake of the nineteen-sixties, the…

— Peter L. Berger

“Mannheim believed that ideologizing influences, while they could not be eradicated completely, could be mitigated by the systematic analysis of as many…

— Peter L. Berger

“The reality of everyday life further presents itself to me as an intersubjective world, a world that I share with others. This…

— Peter L. Berger

If a socialist economy is opened up to increasing degrees of market forces, a point will be reached at which democratic governance…

— Peter L. Berger

Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market…

— Peter L. Berger

“Our understanding of the sociology of knowledge leads to the conclusion that the sociologies of language and religion cannot be considered peripheral…

— Peter L. Berger

East Asia confirms the superior capacity of industrial capitalism in raising the material standard of living of large masses of people.

— Peter L. Berger

Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the…

— Peter L. Berger

There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the…

— Peter L. Berger

We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization

— Peter L. Berger

Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and…

— Peter L. Berger