Quotes from Georg Simmel

A metrópole é a sede desta cultura, que eliminou todas as características da pessoa

Nietzsche may have seen the relentless struggle of the individual as the prerequisite for his full development, the fundamental motive was at work, namely the resistance of the individual to being leveled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism.

The atrophy of individual culture through the hypertrophy of objective culture is one reason for the bitter hatred which the preachers of the most extreme individualism, above all Nietzsche, harbour against the metropolis.

Changes in fashion reflects the dullness of nervous impulses: the more nervous the age, the more rapidly its fashions change, simply because the desire for differentiation, one of the most important elements of all fashion, goes hand in hand with the weakening of nervous energy. This fact in itself is one of the reasons why the real seat of fashion is found among the upper classes.

What we call the present is usually nothing more than a combination of a fragment of the past with a fragment of the future.

Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.

In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events.

Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.

Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor.

Under certain circumstances, one nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd.

Judging from the ugly and repugnant things that are sometimes in vogue, it would seem as though fashion were desirous of exhibiting its power by getting us to adopt the most atrocious things for its sake alone.

Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.

For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation it is a specific form of interaction.

Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.

Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.

In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify but which he must accept upon faith and belief.

F]ashion — i.e., the latest, fashion — in all these things (social forms, apparel, aesthetic judgment etc.) affects only the upper class. Just as soon as the lower classes begin to copy their style, thereby crossing the line of demarcation the upper classes have drawn and destroying the uniformity of their coherence, the upper classes turn away from this style and adopt a new one, which in its turn differentiates them from the masses; and thus the game goes merrily on.

Thus fashion represents nothing more than one of the many forms of life by the aid of which we seek to combine in uniform spheres of activity and the tendency towards social equalization with the desire for individual differentiation and change.

From an objective standpoint, life according to fashion consists of a balancing of destruction and upbuilding; its content acquires characteristics by destruction of an earlier form; it possesses a peculiar uniformity, in which the satisfying of the love of destruction and of the demand for positive elements can no longer be separated from each other.

The idea that life is essentially based on intellect, and that intellect is accepted in practical life as the most valuable of our mental energies, goes hand in hand with the growth of a money economy.

The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations.

For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.

The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.

Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.