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Top 15 Richard Sennett Quotes (2025 Update)

Richard Sennett Quote: “We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.”

1. “We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.”

2. “Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.”

3. “Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.”

4. “The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Like the Roman town grid, the New York plan was laid down on largely empty land, a city designed in advance of being inhabited; if the Romans consulted the heavens for guidance in this effort, the city fathers of New York consulted the banks.”

5. “Like the Roman town grid, the New York plan was laid down on largely empty land, a city designed in advance of being inhabited; if the Romans consulted the heavens for guidance in this effort, the city fathers of New York consulted the banks.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “To accept life in its disjointed pieces is an adult experience of freedom, but still these pieces must lodge and embed themselves somewhere, hopefully in a place that allows them to grow and endure.”

6. “To accept life in its disjointed pieces is an adult experience of freedom, but still these pieces must lodge and embed themselves somewhere, hopefully in a place that allows them to grow and endure.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “The pleasures of relaxed chat, of casual conversation, encourage the ethnographer in everyone.”

7. “The pleasures of relaxed chat, of casual conversation, encourage the ethnographer in everyone.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Authority is itself inherently an act of imagination.”

8. “Authority is itself inherently an act of imagination.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Developments in high technology reflect an ancient model for craftsmanship, but the reality on the ground is that people who aspire to be good craftsmen are depressed, ignored, or misunderstood by social institutions. These ills are complicated because few institutions set out to produce unhappy workers. People seek refuge in inwardness when material engagement proves empty; mental anticipation is privileged above concrete encounter; standards of quality in work separate design from execution.”

9. “Developments in high technology reflect an ancient model for craftsmanship, but the reality on the ground is that people who aspire to be good craftsmen are depressed, ignored, or misunderstood by social institutions. These ills are complicated because few institutions set out to produce unhappy workers. People seek refuge in inwardness when material engagement proves empty; mental anticipation is privileged above concrete encounter; standards of quality in work separate design from execution.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Tocqueville saw the brute repression of deviants as a necessity if men were to keep convincing themselves of their collective dignity through their collective sameness. The “poets of society,” the men who challenged the norms, would have to be silenced so that sameness could be maintained.”

10. “Tocqueville saw the brute repression of deviants as a necessity if men were to keep convincing themselves of their collective dignity through their collective sameness. The “poets of society,” the men who challenged the norms, would have to be silenced so that sameness could be maintained.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “A healthy obsession, we could say, interrogates its own driving convictions.”

11. “A healthy obsession, we could say, interrogates its own driving convictions.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “The past was in them, still disturbing but no longer a governing history; the trauma strengthened the convictions they possessed about how to lead their lives.”

12. “The past was in them, still disturbing but no longer a governing history; the trauma strengthened the convictions they possessed about how to lead their lives.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “The top managers are defensive about these departures; they point to how safe, attractive, and up-to-date the workplace is. Rodney Everts is less defensive but equally perplexed. “When somebody tells me there’s no future here, I ask what they want. They don’t know; they tell me you shouldn’t be stuck in one place.” Fortunately, the job market in Boston for low-wage workers is strong at the moment, but there is something puzzling about the sheer impulse to get out.”

13. “The top managers are defensive about these departures; they point to how safe, attractive, and up-to-date the workplace is. Rodney Everts is less defensive but equally perplexed. “When somebody tells me there’s no future here, I ask what they want. They don’t know; they tell me you shouldn’t be stuck in one place.” Fortunately, the job market in Boston for low-wage workers is strong at the moment, but there is something puzzling about the sheer impulse to get out.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Good craftsmanship implies socialism. The workings of a modern Japanese auto plant or a Linux chat room might have expanded their sympathy for collaboration of other sorts, but still, all three disputed the pursuit of quality simply as a means to profit.”

14. “Good craftsmanship implies socialism. The workings of a modern Japanese auto plant or a Linux chat room might have expanded their sympathy for collaboration of other sorts, but still, all three disputed the pursuit of quality simply as a means to profit.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “The rise of the bourgeoisie” is a hackneyed phrase, so much so that one historian has been moved to comment that the only historical constant is that the middle classes are always everywhere rising.”

15. “The rise of the bourgeoisie” is a hackneyed phrase, so much so that one historian has been moved to comment that the only historical constant is that the middle classes are always everywhere rising.”

— Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett Quote: “Institutional changes, instead of following the path of a guided arrow, head in different and often conflicting directions: a profitable operating unit is suddenly sold, for example, yet a few years later the parent company tries to get back into the business in which it knew how to make money before it sought to reinvent itself. Such twists have prompted the sociologists Scott Lash and John Urry to speak more largely of flexibility as “the end of organized capitalism.”

16. “Institutional changes, instead of following the path of a guided arrow, head in different and often conflicting directions: a profitable operating unit is suddenly sold, for example, yet a few years later the parent company tries to get back into the business in which it knew how to make money before it sought to reinvent itself. Such twists have prompted the sociologists Scott Lash and John Urry to speak more largely of flexibility as “the end of organized capitalism.”

— Richard Sennett

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