"What makes the spectacle of Western bourgeois society so repulsive is the waste and squander of resources on needless products of status or display for the sake of consumption."

“The relationship between a civilization's socio-economic structure and its culture is perhaps the most complicated of all problems for the sociologist.”

“Television, as the most "public" of media, has its limits.”

“The discussion of any society risks seduction by what is transient and tumultuous.”

“Every society seeks to establish a set of meanings through which people can relate themselves to the world.”

“Crime is a form of "unorganized" class struggle, and the lowest groups in the society have always committed a disproportionate number of crimes.”

“That fabulous polymath Samuel Johnson maintained that no man in his right mind ever read a book through from beginning to end.”