Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us.
David RiesmanThe premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality.
David RiesmanSocial Science … led us to the fallacy that, since all men have their being in culture and as a result of culture, they owe a debt to that culture which even a lifetime of altruism could not repay.
David RiesmanOur society offers little in the way of reeducation for those who have been torn away from their traditional culture and suddenly exposed to all the blandishments of mass culture-even the churches which follow the hillbillies to the city often make use of the same "hard sell" that the advertisers and politicians do.
David Riesman