Georg Simmel

“Every interaction is a kind of exchange.”

“The stranger is an element of the group itself.”

“To be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.”

“Secrecy secures, so to speak, the possibility of a second world alongside the manifest world.”

“One can only be a stranger in a group which is itself a closed unit.”

“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.”

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

“Punctuality, calculability, exactness are forced upon life by the complexity and extension of metropolitan existence.”

“Man is the connecting and separating creature.”

“The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers.”

“Fashion is a form of social imitation which is always on the verge of its own destruction.”

“Money is the most terrible of the levelers.”

“The human soul requires seeing a sequence of events as a story.”

“The essence of the moral act is that the agent’s own advantage is not the motive for it.”

“Culture is the way in which the human spirit has expressed itself.”