"BY primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling."
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p. 23 (1962)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Cooley
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Charles Cooley
Charles Horton Cooley (August 17, 1864 – May 7, 1929) was an American sociologist, Professor of Economics and Sociology at the , and founding member of the , known for his concept of the , which is the concept that a person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others.
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