Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.
Georg SimmelRead
For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Strangers are perceived through a lens of categories rather than as unique individuals, influenced by our proximity or distance from them.
Georg Simmel's quote underscores how humans often categorize strangers based on perceived traits or types instead of acknowledging their individuality. This perspective indicates that our relationships with others are affected by our physical or emotional distance, prompting us to see others not simply as they are, but as representations of broader classes or categories, highlighting an inherent disconnect in human interactions.
Themes
StrangersIndividualityDistanceRelationshipsPerception
In practice
Example use cases
Discussing societal views on immigration and how strangers are often labeled by their origins.
More from Georg Simmel
All quotes βSecrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.
Georg SimmelRead
Music and love are the only accomplishments of humanity which do not, in an absolute sense, have to be called attempts with unsuitable means.
Georg SimmelRead
Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.
Georg SimmelRead
In the immediate as well as the symbolic sense, in the physical as well as the intellectual sense, we are at any moment those who separate the connected, or connect the separate.
Georg SimmelRead
For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.
Georg SimmelRead
Similar quotes
The United Nations stands for the freedom and equality of all peoples, irrespective of race, religion, or ideology.
Ralph BuncheRead
Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
Jacob BronowskiRead
What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.
Kurt VonnegutRead
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.
John RuskinRead
No religion is higher than humanity
Abdul Sattar EdhiRead
Faith is never identical with piety.
Karl BarthRead