Georg Simmel > Quotes

“The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.”
― Georg Simmel

“By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.”
― Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms

“The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones.”
― Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel

“[Nostalgic sentiments] are nothing other than the rosy illumination of a past that has been spared the shadows of the present.”
― Georg Simmel

“The educated person is one who knows how to find out what he does not know”
― George Simmel

“A man is well educated when he knows where to find what he doesn’t know.”
― George Simmel

“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.”
― George Simmel

“One needs to properly possess only a couple of great thoughts--they shed light on many stretches whose illumination one would never have believed in.”
― Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms

“Perhaps one has to have placed life in the center of one’s worldview and valued it as much as I have in order to know that one may not keep it, but must yield it up.”
― Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms

“All feeling of shame rests upon isolation of the individual; it arises whenever stress is laid upon the ego, whenever the attention of a circle is drawn to such an individual — in reality or only in his imagination —which at the same time is felt to be in some way incongruous. For that reason retiring and weak natures particularly incline to feelings of shame.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“Our fellowman either may voluntarily reveal to us the truth about himself, or by dissimulation he may deceive us as to the truth. No other object of knowledge can thus of its own initiative, either enlighten us with reference to itself or conceal itself, as a human being can. No other knowable object modifies its conduct from consideration of its being understood or misunderstood.”
― Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

“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.”
― Georg Simmel

“The exchangeability that is expressed in money must inevitably have repercussions upon the quality of commodities themselves, or must interact
with it. The disparagement of the interest in the individuality of a
commodity leads to a disparagement of
individuality itself. If the two sides
to a commodity are its quality and it
s price, then it seems logically
impossible for the interest to be focused on only one of these sides: for
cheapness is an empty word if it does not imply a low price for a relative
good quality, and good quality is
an economic attraction only for a
correspondingly fair price. And yet this conceptual impossibility is psychologically real and effective.
The interest in the one side can be so
great that its logically necessary counterpart completely disappears. The
typical instance of one of these case
s is the ‘fifty cents bazaar’. The
principle of valuation in the mode
rn money economy finds its clearest
expression here. It is not the commodity
that is the centre of interest here
but the price—a principle that in former times not only would have appeared shameless but would have been
absolutely impossible. It has been
rightly pointed out that the medieval town, despite all the progress it
embodied, still lacked the extensive
capital economy, and that this was the
reason for seeking the ideal of the economy not so much in the expansion
(which is possibly only through cheapness) but rather in the quality of the goods offered; hence the great contributions of the applied arts, the
rigorous control of production, the
strict policing of basic necessities, etc.
Such is one extreme pole of the
series, whose other pole is characterized by the slogan, ‘cheap and bad’—a synthesis that is possibly only if we are hypnotized by cheapness and are not aware of anything else. The levelling of objects to that of money reduces the subjective interest first in their specific qualities and then, as a further consequence, in the objects
themselves. The production of cheap
trash is, as it were, the vengeance of
the objects for the fact that they have been ousted from the focal point of
interest by a merely indifferent means.”
― Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money

“Finally, the inner accessibility and reflectiveness of theoretical knowledge which cannot basically be withheld from anybody, as can certain emotions and volitions, has a consequence that directly offsets its practical results. In the first place, it is precisely because of their general accessibility that factors quite independent of personal capacities decide on the factual utilization of knowledge. This leads to the enormous preponderance of the most unintelligent 'educated' person over the cleverest proletarian. The apparent equality with which educational materials are available to everyone interested in them is, in reality, a sheer mockery. The same is true of the other freedoms accorded by the liberal doctrines which, though they certainly do not hamper the individual from gaining goods of any kind, do however disregard the fact that only those already privileged in some way or another have the possibility of acquiring them. For just as the substance of education - in spite of, or because of it general availability - can ultimately be acquired only through individual activity, so it gives rise to the most intangible and thus the most unassailable aristocracy, to a distinction between high and low which can be abolished neither (as can socioeconomic differences) by a decree or a revolution. Thus it was appropriate for Jesus to say to the rich youth: 'Give away your goods to the poor', but not for him to say: 'Give your education to the underprivileged'. There is no advantage that appears to those in inferior positions to be so despised, and before which they feel so deprived and helpless, as the advantage of education. For this reason, attempts to achieve practical equality very often and in so many variations scorn intellectual education. This is true of Buddha, the Cynics, certain currents in Christianity, down to Robespierre's 'nous n'avons pas besoin de savants'. In speech and writing - which, viewed abstractly, are a manifestation of its communal nature - makes possible its accumulation, and, especially, its concentration so that, in this respect, the gulf between high and low is persistently widened. The intellectually gifted or the materially independent person will have all the more chances for standing out from the masses the larger and more concentrated are the available educational materials. Just as the proletarian today has many comforts and cultural enjoyments that were formerly denied to him, while at the same time - particularly if we look back over several centuries and millennia - the gulf between his way of life and that of the higher strata has certainly become much deeper, so, similarly, the rise in the general level of knowledge as a whole does not by any means bring about a general levelling, but rather its opposite.”
― Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money

“To the extent that money, with its colourlessness and its indifferent quality, can become a common denominator of all values, it becomes the frightful leveller — it hollows out the core of things, their peculiarities, their specific values and their uniqueness and incomparability in a way which is beyond repair.”
― Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life

“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.”
― Georg Simmel

“Since one never can absolutely know another, as this would mean knowledge of every particular thought and feeling; since we must rather form a conception of a personal unity out of the fragments of another person in which alone he is accessible to us, the unity so formed necessarily depends upon that portion of the Other which our standpoint toward him permits us to see.”
― Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

“A metrópole é a sede desta cultura, que eliminou todas as características da pessoa”
― Georg Simmel, Le metropoli e la vita dello spirito

“Primitive man, living in communities of restricted extent, providing for his needs by his own production or by direct co-operation, limiting his spiritual interests to personal experience or to simple tradition, surveys and controls the material of his existence more easily and completely than the man of higher culture. 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. In a much wider degree than people are accustomed to realize, modern civilized life—from the economic system which is constantly becoming more and more a credit-economy, to the pursuit of science, in which the majority of investigators must use countless results obtained by others, and not directly subject to verification—depends upon faith in the honor of others. We rest our most serious decisions upon a complicated system of conceptions, the majority of which presuppose confidence that we have not been deceived. Hence prevarication in modern circumstances becomes something much more devastating, something placing the foundations of life much more in jeopardy, than was earlier the case.”
― Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

“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.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“The fashionable person is regarded with mingled feelings of approval and envy; we envy him as an individual, but approve him as a member of a set or group. [...] The moment we envy an object or a person, we are no longer absolutely excluded from it; some relation or other has been established — between both the same psychic content now exists — although in entirely different categories and forms of sensations. This quiet personal usurpation of the envied property contains a kind of antidote, which occasionally counter-acts the evil effects of this feeling of envy. The contents of fashion afford an especially good chance for the development of this conciliatory shade of envy, which also gives to the envied person a better conscience because of his satisfaction over his good fortune.

[...] From all this we see that fashion furnishes an ideal field for individuals with dependent natures, whose self-consciousness, however, requires a certain amount of prominence, attention, and singularity.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“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.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“The advance beyond this stage is reflected in the circumstance that our thoughts, actions, and feelings are determined by the future as well as by fixed, past, and traditional factors: the teleological individual represents the counterpole of the imitative mortal. The imitator is the passive individual, who believes in social similarity and adapts himself to existing elements; the teleological individual, on the other hand, is ever experimenting, always restlessly striving, and he relies on his own personal conviction.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“The real variability of historical life is therefore vested in the middle classes, and for this reason the history of social and cultural movements has fallen into an entirely different ace since the tiers état assumed control. For this reason fashion, which represents the variable and contrasting forms of life, has since then become much broader and more animated, and also because of the transformation in the immediate political life, for man requires an ephemeral tyrant the moment he has rid himself of the absolute and permanent one.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“Among primitive peoples we often find that closely connected groups living under exactly similar conditions develop sharply differentiated fashions, by means of which each group establishes uniformity within, as well as difference without the prescribed set. On the other hand, there exists a wide-spread predilection for importing fashions from without, and such foreign fashions assume a greater value within the circle, simply because they did not originate there. [...] Because of their external origin, these imported fashions create a special and significant form of socialization, which arises through mutual relation to a point without the circle. It sometimes appears as though social elements, just like the axes of vision, converge best at a point that is not too near. The currency, or more precisely the medium of exchange among primitive races, often consists of objects that are brought in from without. [...] Paris modes are frequently created with the sole intention of setting a fashion elsewhere.

This motive of foreignness, which fashion employs in its socializing endeavors, is restricted to higher civilization, because novelty, which foreign origin guarantees in extreme form, is often regarded by primitive races as an evil. [...] The savage is afraid of strange appearances; the difficulties and dangers that beset his career cause him to scent danger in anything new which he does not understand and which he cannot assign to a familiar category. Civilization, however, transforms this affectation into its very opposite. Whatever is exceptional, bizarre, or conspicuous, or whatever departs from the customary norm, exercises a peculiar charm upon the man of culture, entirely independent of its material justification. The removal of the feelings of insecurity with reference to all things new was accomplished by the progress of civilization.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“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.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“[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.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“Die Lebensbedingungen der Mode als einer durchgängigen Erscheinung in der Geschichte unserer Gattung sind hiermit umschrieben. Sie ist Nachahmung eines gegebenen Musters und genügt damit dem Bedürfnis nach sozialer Anlehnung, sie führt den Einzelnen auf die Bahn, die Alle gehen, sie gibt ein Allgemeines, das das Verhalten jedes Einzelnen zu einem bloßen Beispiel macht. Nicht weniger aber befriedigt sie das Unterschiedsbedürfnis, die Tendenz auf Differenzierung, Abwechslung, Sich-abheben.”
― Georg Simmel, Philosophie der Mode

“What we call the present is usually nothing more than a combination of a fragment of the past with a fragment of the future.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda

“Brutal violence is hereby committed against the individuality of things; all variation is destroyed by the curious supremacy of this one category of expressions, for example, when we designate all things that happen to please us for any reason whatsoever as "chic", or "smart", even though the objects in question may bear no relation whatsoever to the fields to which these expressions belong. [...] It cannot be denied that inasmuch as violence is done to objects treated in this way, and inasmuch as they are all transformed uniformly to a category of our own making, the individual really renders an arbitrary decision with respect to these objects, he acquires an individual feeling of power, and thus the ego is strongly emphasized.

[...] Only the noblest persons seek the greatest depth and power of their ego by respecting the individuality inherent in things. The hostility which the soul bears to the supremacy, independence, and indifference of the universe gives rise — beside the loftiest and most valuable strivings of humanity — to attempts to oppress things externally; the ego offer violence to them not by absorbing and molding their powers, not by recognizing their individuality only to make it serviceable, but by forcing it to bow outwardly to some subjective formula. To be sure the ego has not in reality gained control of the things, but only of its ow false and fanciful conception of them.”
― Georg Simmel, La moda