Quotes from Richard Sennett

Authority is itself inherently an act of imagination.

Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.

Electronic communication is one means by which the very idea of public life has been put to an end.

To the absolutist in every craftsman, each imperfection is a failure; to the practitioner, obsession with perfection seems a perception for failure.

A healthy obsession, we could say, interrogates its own driving convictions.

But still he keeps working with a will; that's the craftsman in him.

We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.

you can't understand how wine is made simply by drinking lots of it.

The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.

To accept life in its disjointed pieces is an adult experience of freedom, but still these pieces must lodge and embed themselves somewhere, hopefully in a place that allows them to grow and endure.

city' meant two different things – one a physical place, the other a mentality compiled from perceptions, behaviours and beliefs.

the built environment is one thing, how people dwell in it another.

Rico'nun 'hurda' tan?m?na uyduÄŸunu söylemek güç olsa da, o kendisinin teknik bilgi aç?s?ndan 'gerileme dönemine' girmek üzere olduÄŸunu düÅŸünüyor. Bu noktada, toplumun gençliÄŸe yapt??? vurguyla, kendisinin yaÅŸlanma konusundaki fikirleri birleÅŸiyor. Toplumsal önyarg?, kiÅŸinin içindeki güçten düÅŸme korkusunu körüklüyor.

The past was in them, still disturbing but no longer a governing history; the trauma strengthened the convictions they possessed about how to lead their lives.

Institutional changes, instead of following the path of a guided arrow, head in different and often conflicting directions: a profitable operating unit is suddenly sold, for example, yet a few years later the parent company tries to get back into the business in which it knew how to make money before it sought to reinvent itself. Such twists have prompted the sociologists Scott Lash and John Urry to speak more largely of flexibility as "the end of organized capitalism.

Developments in high technology reflect an ancient model for craftsmanship, but the reality on the ground is that people who aspire to be good craftsmen are depressed, ignored, or misunderstood by social institutions. These ills are complicated because few institutions set out to produce unhappy workers. People seek refuge in inwardness when material engagement proves empty; mental anticipation is privileged above concrete encounter; standards of quality in work separate design from execution.

Good craftsmanship implies socialism. The workings of a modern Japanese auto plant or a Linux chat room might have expanded their sympathy for collaboration of other sorts, but still, all three disputed the pursuit of quality simply as a means to profit.

In cultural production, Levi-Strauss famously declares, food is both good to eat (bonne a manger) and good to think with (bonne a penser). He means this literally: cooking food begets the idea of heating for other purposes; people who share parts of a cooked deer begin to think they can share parts of a heated house; the abstraction he is a warm person (in the sense of sociable) then becomes possible to think.14 These are domain shifts.

Ä°yi bir iÅŸin nitelikleriyle iyi bir karakterin nitelikleri art?k örtüÅŸmüyordu.

sürekli riske maruz kalmak, karakter duygunuzu iyice a??nd?r?r. Ortalamaya doÄŸru regresyon eÄŸilimini yenebilecek hiçbir anlat? yoktur; insan her defas?nda 'baÅŸtan baÅŸlar'.

Each person's self has become his principal burden; to know oneself has become an end, instead of a means through which one knows the world.

There are] code words used today to measure the 'authenticity' of relationships or other persons. We speak of whether we can personally 'relate' to events or other persons, and whether in the relationship itself people are 'open' to one another. The first is a cover word for measuring the other in terms of a mirror of self-concern, and the second is a cover for measuring social interaction in terms of the market exchange of confession.

Lo que hoy tiene de particular la incertidumbre es que existe sin la amenaza de un desastre histórico; y en cambio, está integrada en las prácticas cotidianas de un capitalismo vigoroso (…). La consigna "nada a largo plazo" desorienta la acción planificada, disuelve los vínculos de confianza y compromiso y separa la voluntad del comportamiento.