David Riesman

"Authenticity is the greatest luxury of our age."

"The mass media is the ventriloquist; we are the dummy."

"Work provides not just income but identity and social position."

"We have outsourced our moral judgment to the collective."

"The fear of not fitting in surpasses the fear of death."

"Other-direction makes us more adaptive but less authentic."

"The consumer society rewards those who consume themselves."

"We are producing a generation skilled at mirroring but not thinking."

"Independence is increasingly seen as antisocial deviance."

"The organization man has become the organization self."

"We mistake the image for the reality with increasing frequency."

"The crowd provides security but demands a price in self-erasure."

"Modern anxiety stems from the collapse of fixed identity."

"The peer group is democracy's dark side."

"We have become so sensitive to others we've gone numb to ourselves."

"Tradition-direction seems quaint in our age of perpetual reinvention."

"The other-directed person is forever seeking permission to exist."

"We confuse networks with genuine community."

"Modern life demands constant performance of the self."

"The ability to disappoint others is essential to authentic living."

"We are all becoming character actors in someone else's script."

"The crowd offers belonging but steals individuality."

"Technology amplifies our tendency to external direction."

"Modern man suffers from a chronic identity crisis."

"We have made happiness a democratic right and therefore impossible."

"The masses are neither good nor evil; they are other-directed."

"Consumption has replaced production as the locus of identity."

"We are taught to want what others want."

"The pressure to be liked is the modern equivalent of original sin."

"Other-direction produces compliance without conviction."