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I think if I hadn't become a sociologist, I would have become very anti-intellectual.

Academic sociologists have been trained to conceive of their discipline - sociology - as the scientific study of society, and to remit to the sister discipline of psychology the study of individuals.

My students often ask me, 'What is sociology?' And I tell them, 'It's the study of the way in which human beings are shaped by things that they don't see.'

Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

No sociologist should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time.

The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.

One of the key places where sociology should be used is in analyzing 'the world' of our times, so that we can be more discerning. To resist the dangers of the world, you have to recognize the distortions and seductions of the world.

The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden.

The scientific study of labor economics provided the opportunity for me to unite theory with evidence my lifetime intellectual passion.