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The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

Peter L. Berger

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Peter L. Berger
Age: 88 †
Born: 1929
Born: March 17
Died: 2017
Died: June 27
Sociologist
Theologian
University Teacher
Vienna
Austria
Peter Ludwig Berge
Explains
Recollection
Flexibility
Flexible
Changing
Happened
History
Interprets
Past
Malleable

More quotes by Peter L. Berger

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I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization
Peter L. Berger
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If you are good for nothing else, you can still serve as a bad example.
Peter L. Berger
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An economy oriented toward production for market exchange provides the optimal conditions for long-lasting and ever-expanding productive capacity based on modern technology.
Peter L. Berger
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Language is capable of becoming the objective repository of vast accumulations of meaning and experience, which it can then preserve in time and transmit to following generations.
Peter L. Berger
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If a socialist economy is opened up to increasing degrees of market forces, a point will be reached at which democratic governance becomes a possibility.
Peter L. Berger
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Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.
Peter L. Berger
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A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.
Peter L. Berger
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When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear.
Peter L. Berger
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Some people think that as the Chinese economy becomes more and more capitalistic it will inevitably become more democratic
Peter L. Berger
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Capitalism has been one of the most dynamic forces in human history, transforming one society after another, and today it has become established as an international system determining the economic fate of most of mankind.
Peter L. Berger
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In acute suffering the need for meaning is as strong or stronger than the need for happiness.
Peter L. Berger
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There is an intrinsic linkage between socialism and economic inefficiency.
Peter L. Berger
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In science, as in love, a concentration on technique is likely to lead to impotence.
Peter L. Berger
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We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization
Peter L. Berger
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East Asia confirms the superior capacity of industrial capitalism in raising the material standard of living of large masses of people.
Peter L. Berger
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To be located in society means to be at the intersection point of specific social forces. Commonly one ignores these forces one also knows that there is not an awful lot that one can do about this.
Peter L. Berger
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F. A. Hayek is probably the most prominent advocate of capitalism in the present period.
Peter L. Berger
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Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy
Peter L. Berger
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So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.
Peter L. Berger
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It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term
Peter L. Berger