Charles Horton Cooley

“A separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals.”

“To get away from conventions is a sign of originality; to get away from them successfully is a sign of genius.”

“I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think you think I am.”

“Society and individuals are collective and distributive aspects of the same thing.”

“The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.”

“There is no sense of I, as in pride or shame, without its correlative sense of you, or he, or they.”

“If we say that a man is a product of his environment, we must not forget that the environment is a product of men.”

“Pride and shame are roots of the same tree.”

“An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.”

“Our life is primarily on the plane of the imagination.”