Top Robert Neelly Bellah Quotes

Robert Neelly Bellah Biography

Robert Neelly Bellah (February 23, 1927 – July 30, 2013) was an American sociologist, and the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was internationally known for his work related to the sociology of religion.

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Robert Neelly Bellah Quotes

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

Children, Home, Parent, Process, Parents, Frightening

We're [humans] running great risks of doing things that will not be good for us. The cost can be very high indeed if we reach the point where we can't adapt to our own increasingly rapid adaptations. We run the risk of early extinction. So this certainly isn't a triumphalist story, but it is trying to get at what, in the very long run, leads to the amazing creatures that we are.

Adapt, Long, Risk, Run, Running, Story

The central icon of Catholic Christianity is mother and child. That motif is so deep in not just our human experience but in our animal, biological past.

Animal, Child, Children, Human, Mother

While there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in society say they desire nor, especially in the case of children, with their best interests.

Children, Desire, People, Practical, Reasons

Women have entered the work force. . . partly to express their feelings of self-worth. . . partly because today many families would not survive without two incomes, partly because they are not at all sure their marriages will last. The day of the husband as permanent meal-ticket is over, a fact most women recognize, however they feel about "women's liberation.

Day, Husband, Liberation, Marriages, Self Worth, Two

We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and "history" took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists.

Evolution, Narrative, Notion, Part, Point, Scientist

We have imagined ourselves a special creation, set apart from other humans. In the last twentieth century, we see that our povertyis as absolute as that of the poorest nations. We have attempted to deny the human condition in our quest for power after power. It would be well for us to rejoin the human race, to accept our essential poverty as a gift, and to share our material wealth with those in need.

Essential, Lasts, Poverty, Race, Special

Hinduism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are huge traditions of enormous importance, and they aren't monotheistic. Again, this reflects the fact that our preconceptions about what religion is are so influenced by Protestantism - either real Protestantism or the secularized Protestantism that dominates our culture - and its assumption that beliefs are the most important thing.

Buddhism, Important, Influenced, Monotheistic, Preconceptions, Real

Yet Buddhism is four hundred years older than Christianity, and if it's not a universal religion I don't know what a universal religion is. There's also a strong focus on selectionism and the notion that religion plays a functional role in the evolutionary process. But religion is dysfunctional all the time, as well as functional. It's not so simple.

Buddhism, Focus, Hundred, Selectionism, Simple, Strong

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.

Cusp, Democracy, Foster, Mean, Responsibility, Sense

We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love and learning.

Discover, Face, Faces, Side, Sides, Who We Are

We have to treat others as part of who we are, rather than as a 'them' with whom we are in constant competition.

Competition, Part, Treat, Who We Are, Words Of Wisdom

That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.

Acquisition, Known, Material, Philosophy, Television

It's clear all the way through history that practices are primary and beliefs are secondary.

Belief, Clear, Practice, Practices, Secondary, Way

"Nothing is ever lost" means that what we are now goes all the way back through natural history. We are biological organisms and not simply computerized brains. By focusing totally on the present, thinking only about science and computers, and forgetting four billion years of life on this planet, we are losing perspective on who and what we are.

Life, Mean, Planet, Science, Thinking, Years

Robert Neelly Bellah Biography

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