Peter L. Berger

“An institution is a normative pattern of conduct that is held in place by what are called sanctions.”

“The world of a child is a world of miracles and wonders; the world of an adult is a world of crushing boredom.”

“An institution is a distinctive complex of social actions.”

“Every human society is a human construction. The same is true, of course, of the individual.”

“The first wisdom of sociology is this—things are not what they seem.”

“Reality is socially constructed.”

“The sociologist, then, is someone concerned with understanding society in a disciplined way.”

“The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.”

“The individual is not born a member of society. He is born with a predisposition toward sociality, and he becomes a member of society.”

“The sociologist is a person intensively, endlessly, shamelessly interested in the doings of men.”

“Pluralism is a situation in which people of different beliefs and cultures live together in a single society.”

“Society is our experience with other people.”

“Humor is the closest thing to religious transcendence, to a leap of faith, that can be experienced in a totally secular world.”

“Identity is socially bestowed, socially sustained, and socially transformed.”

“Society is the walls of our imprisonment in history.”

“Humor is the closest thing to religious transcendence, to a leap of faith, that we can experience in our daily lives.”

“The plausibility of the views of the world that we have is sustained by the social context in which we live.”

“To be a sociologist is to be a Peeping Tom on a cosmic scale.”

“The discovery of sociology can be described as a traumatic experience from which many people never recover.”

“The first wisdom of sociology is this: things are not what they seem.”