Georg Simmel quotes

Georg Simmel was a German sociologist and philosopher, recognized as one of the pioneers of modern sociology. His work explored social interaction, individualism, and the forms and patterns of social life. He made significant contributions to social theory and urban studies. Here are 53 of his quotes:

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

Georg Simmel

Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.

Georg Simmel

Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.

Georg Simmel

Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.

Georg Simmel

The most profound reason... why the metropolis conduces to the urge for the most individual personal existence... appears to me to be the following: the development of modern culture is characterized by the preponderance of what one may call the "objective spirit" over the "subjective spirit."

Georg Simmel

Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual.

Georg Simmel

For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.

Georg Simmel

The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations.

Georg Simmel

The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life.

Georg Simmel

The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.

Georg Simmel

For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.

Georg Simmel

Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor.

Georg Simmel

Thus, the technique of metropolitan life is unimaginable without the most punctual integration of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal time schedule.

Georg Simmel

Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.

Georg Simmel

In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief.

Georg Simmel

In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events.

Georg Simmel

The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy.

Georg Simmel

On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself.

Georg Simmel

The first internal relation that is essential to a secret society is the reciprocal confidence of its members.

Georg Simmel

Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.

Georg Simmel

The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles.

Georg Simmel

Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it. Even when one of the parties does not notice the secret factor, yet the attitude of the concealer, and consequently the whole relationship, will be modified by it.

Georg Simmel