Georg Simmel Quotes

Secrecy Is Thus, So To Speak, A Transition Stadium Between Being And Not-being.

The First Internal Relation That Is Essential To A Secret Society Is The Reciprocal Confidence Of Its Members.

Every Superior Personality, And Every Superior Performance, Has, For The Average Of Mankind, Something Mysterious.

On The One Hand, Life Is Made Infinitely Easy For The Personality In That Stimulations, Interests, Uses Of Time And Consciousness Are Offered To It From All Sides. They Carry The Person As If In A Stream, And One Needs Hardly To Swim For Oneself.

The Metropolis Has Always Been The Seat Of The Money Economy.

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.

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.

Secrecy Sets Barriers Between Men, But At The Same Time Offers The Seductive Temptation To Break Through The Barriers By Gossip Or Confession.

Discretion Is Nothing Other Than The Sense Of Justice With Respect To The Sphere Of The Intimate Contents Of Life.

Wandering, (is) Considered As A State Of Detachment Form Every Given Point In Space.

Thus, The Technique Of Metropolitan Life Is Unimaginable Without The Most Punctual Integration Of All Activities And Mutual Relations Into A Stable And Impersonal Time Schedule.

Nothing More Can Be Attempted Than To Establish The Beginning And The Direction Of An Infinitely Long Road. The Pretension Of Any Systematic And Definitive Completeness Would Be, At Least, A Self-illusion. Perfection Can Here Be Obtained By The Individual Student Only In The Subjective Sense That He Communicates Everything He Has Been Able To See.