The Mind and Society (1916) is the English title of the seminal Italian sociological work Trattato di Sociologia Generale by sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923).
In this book Pareto presents the first sociological cycle theory, centered around the concept of an elite social class.
Pareto divided the elite class into two groups: the conservative defenders of the status quo (violent 'lions'), and the radical promoters of change (cunning 'foxes'). In his view of society, the power constantly passes from 'foxes' to 'lions' and vice versa.
The Mind and Society has been named one of the most influential books ever written by Martin Seymour-Smith. The English edition was published in 1935.
Famous quotes containing the words mind and/or society:
“All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“I prefer surveying for a week to spending a week in fashionable society even of the best class.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)