Quotes from Charles Horton Cooley

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.

The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.

Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.

An artist cannot fail it is a success to be one.

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.

We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind.

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

Faith in our associates is part of our faith in God.

A cat cares for you only as a source of food, security and a place in the sun.

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.