Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 7
“BY primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling.”
Source: Social Organization: a Study of the Larger Mind, 1909, p. 23 (1962)
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Charles Cooley 17
American sociologist 1864–1929Related quotes
“Organization is the form of every human association for the attainment of a common purpose.”
Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 10
"The Corpus", from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)
"Kinds of Killing" https://web.archive.org/web/20121111032625/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1008/kinds-of-killing (2011) (original emphasis)
John M. Gaus, Leonard Dupee White, and Marshall E. Dimock. Frontiers of public administration. (1936).
John M. Gaus, Leonard Dupee White, and Marshall E. Dimock. "A theory of organization in public administration." The Frontiers of Public Administration (1936): 66.; Bold text cited in Philip Selznick (1948, 25)
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)
Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949), Chapter IV: Consciousness: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology