“An enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.”

The Nature of Human Values is not a beach read. The prose is dense 1970s social science. But the framework is timeless. Rokeach understood that our values are not clouds in the sky; they are the bones beneath our skin.

The Nature of Human Values (1973) Milton Rokeach establishes a seminal framework for understanding values as the central, guiding principles of human behavior and belief systems