Peter L. Berger quotes - page 3

Peter L. Berger was an Austrian sociologist renowned for his work on the sociology of knowledge and the concept of social construction of reality. His influential writings significantly shaped contemporary sociological theory and the study of religion. He became widely known for co-authoring "The Social Construction of Reality" and for exploring how society and culture shape human perception. Here are 64 of his quotes:

The most important gain is that each [member of society] will be able to predict the other's actions. Concomitantly, the interaction of both becomes predictable... Many actions are possible on a low level of attention. Each action of one is no longer a source of astonishment and potential danger to the other.

Peter L. Berger

Specific procedures of universe-maintenance become necessary when the symbolic universe has become a problem. As long as this is not the case, the symbolic universe is self-maintaining, that is, self-legitimating by the sheer facticity of its objective existence in the society in question.

Peter L. Berger

The game of sociology goes on in a spacious playground.

Peter L. Berger

The second level of legitimation contains theoretical propositions in a rudimentary form. Here may be found various explanatory schemes relating sets of objective meanings. These schemes are highly pragmatic, directly related to concrete actions. Proverbs, moral maxims and wise sayings are common on this level. Here, too, belong legends and folk tales, frequently transmitted in poetic forms.

Peter L. Berger

Society determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall live. This determination may be institutionally programmed in the operation of social controls, as in the institution of law. Society can maim and kill. Indeed, it is in its power over life and death that it manifests its ultimate control over the individual.

Peter L. Berger

At least within our own consciousness, the past is malleable and flexible, constantly changing as our recollection reinterprets and re-explains what has happened.

Peter L. Berger

Legitimation as a process is best described as a 'second-order' objectivation of meaning. Legitimation produces new meanings that serve to integrate the meanings already attached to disparate institutional processes. The function of legitimation is to make objectively available and subjectively plausible the 'first-order' objectivations that have been institutionalized.

Peter L. Berger

The social stock of knowledge differentiates reality by degrees of familiarity... my knowledge of my own occupation and its world is very rich and specific, while I have only very sketchy knowledge of the occupational worlds of others.

Peter L. Berger

The symbolic universe also orders history. It locates all collective events in a cohesive unity that includes past, present and future. With regard to the past, it establishes a 'memory' that is shared by all the individuals socialized within the collectivity. With regard to the future, it establishes a common frame of reference for the projection of individual actions.

Peter L. Berger

The present volume is intended as a systematic, theoretical treatise in the sociology of knowledge. It is not intended, therefore, to give a historical survey of the development of this discipline, or to engage in exegesis of various figures in this or other developments in sociological theory, or even to show how a synthesis may be achieved between several of these figures and developments. Nor is there any polemic intent here. Critical comments on other theoretical positions have been introduced (not in the text, but in the Notes) only where they may serve to clarify the present argument.

Peter L. Berger

Two societies confronting each other with conflicting universes will both develop conceptual machineries designed to maintain their respective universes. From the point of view of intrinsic plausibility the two forms of conceptualization may seem to the outside observer to offer little choice.

Peter L. Berger

The same processes that generate consensus can be manipulated by a social group worker in a summer camp in the Adirondacks and by a Communist brainwasher in a prison camp in China.

Peter L. Berger