Quotes by Charles Horton Cooley

“To get away from ones working environment is, in a sense, to get away from ones self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.”

“A person of definite character and purpose who comprehends our way of thought is sure to exert power over us. He cannot altogether be resisted; because, if he understands us, he can make us understand him, through the word, the look, or other symbol.”

“If we divine a discrepancy between a mans 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.”

“A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.”

“The bashful are always aggressive at heart.”

“Could anything be more indicative of a slight but general insanity than the aspect of the crowd on the streets of Chicago?”

“One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.”

“To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.”

“Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes.”

To get away from ones working environment is; in a sense, to get away from ones self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.

Form the habit of making decisions when your spirit is fresh ... to let dark moods lead is like choosing cowards to command armies.

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.

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

A talent somewhat above mediocrity shrewd and not too sensitive is more likely to rise in the world than genius which is apt to be perturbable and to wear itself out before fruition.

To get away from ones working environment is, in a sense, to get away from ones self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

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

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

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