Peter L. Berger

Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.

In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization.

A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.