9 Quotes & Sayings By Georg Simmel

Georg Simmel was a German sociologist, philosopher of social interaction, and one of the primary founders of modern sociology. Born in 1858, he was trained as an engineer before turning to philosophy. He studied at the Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Zurich. From 1909 to 1911 he was the first professor for sociology at the University of Frankfurt Read more

His works include The Philosophy of Money (1903), Introduction to Sociology (1908), The Metropolis and Mental Life (1910), and The Philosophy of Algorithms (1914). Simmel died in 1923.

1
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
2
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
3
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
4
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
5
Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life. Georg Simmel
6
For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction. Georg Simmel
7
Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship. Georg Simmel
8
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli. Georg Simmel