Quotes from Peter L. Berger

I'm sure Putnam is right that there's been a decline in certain kinds of organizations like bowling leagues. But people participate in communities in other ways.

Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.

But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.

Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.

Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally.

sociology of knowledge is concerned with the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises.

Institutionalization is not, however, an irreversible process, despite the fact that institutions, once formed, have a tendency to persist.49 For a variety of historical reasons, the scope of institutionalized actions may diminish; deinstitutionalization may take place in certain areas of social life.50 For example, the private sphere that has emerged in modern industrial society is considerably deinstitutionalized as compared to the public sphere.51 A

Whatever patterns are introduced will be continuously modified through the exceedingly variegated and subtle interchange of subjective meanings that goes on.

In short, one can doubt big and important, or small and unimportant, things. One can harbor doubts about oneself, the world at large, or God. What these cases have in common is that they question whether something or someone is reliable, trustworthy, and meaningful—that is, whether something or someone is "true." Doubt and truth, in other words, are about relationships.

MAN OCCUPIES A PECULIAR position in the animal kingdom.1Unlike the other higher mammals, he has no species-specific environment,2 no environment firmly structured by his own instinctual organization.

society is understood in terms of an ongoing dialectical process composed of the three moments of externalization, objectivation, and internalization.

Activity becomes process. Choices become destiny. Men then live in the world they themselves have made as if they were fated to do so by powers that are quite independent of their own world-constructing enterprises.

THE FOLLOWING ARGUMENT is intended to be an exercise in sociological theory. Specifically, it seeks to apply a general theoretical perspective derived from the sociology of knowledge to the phenomenon of religion. While at certain points the argument moves on levels of considerable abstraction, it never leaves (at least not intentionally) the frame of reference of the empirical discipline of sociology.

Religion legitimates so effectively because it relates the precarious reality constructions of empirical societies with the ultimate reality.

most historical relationships are ironical in character, or, to put it differently, that the course of history has little to do with the intrinsic logic of ideas that served as causal factors in it

A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.

The botanist looking at a daffodil has no reason to dispute the right of the poet to look at the same object in a very different manner. There are many ways of playing. The point is not that one denies other people's games but that one is clear about the rules of one's own.

Whatever happens "here below" is but a pale reflection of what takes place "up above.

Theology must begin and end with the question of truth.

Joy is play's intention. When this intention is actually realized, in joyful play, the time structure of the playful universe takes on a very specific quality—namely, it becomes eternity. This is probably true of all experiences of intense joy, even when they are not enveloped in the separate reality of play. This is the final insight of Nietzsche's Zarathustra in the midnight song: "All joy wills eternity—wills deep, deep eternity!"33

The world of everyday life is not only taken for granted as reality by the ordinary members of society in the subjectively meaningful conduct of their lives. It is a world that originates in their thoughts and actions, and is maintained as real by these.

religion has been the historically most widespread and effective instrumentality of legitimation.

One of the traits of sophistication is the capacity to cross borders between different cultural relevancies. Humor is often, intentionally or not, the result if not the very technique of such border-crossing. Much of Jewish humor reflects a long history, perhaps all the way back to the Exodus, of Jews migrating between cultures. ... American Jewish humor functioned as a marker of insider sophistication.

exclusivist, pluralist, and inclusivist. The exclusivist position concedes little if anything to the relativizing process: Christianity is reaffirmed in ringing tones as the absolute truth. As one would expect, this position is likely