“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 mor...”

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

“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.”

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to ...”

“You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physica...”

“If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their ma...”

“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”

“Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.”

“The basic idea underlying religion is to create an atmosphere for the spiritual development of the individual.”