C. Wright Mills Quotes

Quotes about:

• You can never really understand an individual unless you also understand the society,historical time period in which they live,personal troubles, and social issues

  C. Wright Mills

  Issues, Historical, Trouble

  120 Copy quote

• The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.

  C. Wright Mills

  Knowledge, Frustration, Political Will

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings”, p.184, Univ of California Press

  126 Copy quote

• Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.

  C. Wright Mills

  Anger, Understanding, Society

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.3, Oxford University Press

  89 Copy quote

• The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is its task and its promise.

  C. Wright Mills

  Two, Imagination, Promise

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.6, Oxford University Press

  87 Copy quote

• By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them.

  C. Wright Mills

  Military, Power, Circles

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Power Elite”, p.18, Oxford University Press

  82 Copy quote

• It is the political task of the social scientist — as of any liberal educator — continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work — and, as an educator, in his life as well — this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society.

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Issues, Imagination

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.187, Oxford University Press

  104 Copy quote

• People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.

  C. Wright Mills

  Believe, Self, People

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Power Elite”, p.14, Oxford University Press

  84 Copy quote

• Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm.

  C. Wright Mills

  Business, Father, Winning

  C. Wright Mills (2002). “White Collar: The American Middle Classes”, p.36, Oxford University Press

  78 Copy quote

• Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this?

  C. Wright Mills

  Asking, May, Sociology

  30 Copy quote

• Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.

  C. Wright Mills

  Inspirational, Freedom, Opportunity

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.174, Oxford University Press

  33 Copy quote

• Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary people do not usually know what this connection means for the kind of people they are becoming and for the kind of history-making in which they might take part.

  C. Wright Mills

  Mean, People, Ordinary

  "The Sociological Imagination". Book by C. Wright Mills, 1959.

  50 Copy quote

• For we cannot adequately understand 'man' as an isolated biological creature, as a bundle of reflexes or a set of instincts, as an 'intelligible field' or a system in and of itself. Whatever else he may be, man is a social and an historical actor who must be understood, if at all, in close and intricate interplay with social and historical structures

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Historical, Actors

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.158, Oxford University Press

  48 Copy quote

• The mass production of distraction is now as much a part of the American way of life as the mass production of automobiles.

  C. Wright Mills

  Way, Entertainment, Distraction

  13 Copy quote

• Power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the person of the wealthy. Celebrity is not inherent in any personality. To be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power requires access to major institutions.

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Personality, Doe

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Power Elite”, p.11, Oxford University Press

  26 Copy quote

• To really belong, we have got, first, to get it clear with ourselves that we do not belong and do not want to belong to an unfree world. As free men and women we have got to reject much of it and to know why we are rejecting it.

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, World, Want

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings”, p.187, Univ of California Press

  38 Copy quote

• Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real.

  C. Wright Mills

  Real, Revolution

  "Listen Yankee". Book by C. Wright Mills, 1960.

  49 Copy quote

• What we experience in various and specific milieux, I have noted, is often caused by structural changes. Accordingly, to understand the changes of many personal milieux we are required to look beyond them. And the number and variety of such structural changes increase as the institutions within which we live become more embracing and more intricately connected with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieux. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination

  C. Wright Mills

  Ideas, Numbers, Imagination

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.10, Oxford University Press

  10 Copy quote

• The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.

  C. Wright Mills

  Stars, Men, White

  34 Copy quote

• The immediate cause of World War III is the military preparation of it.

  C. Wright Mills

  Military, War, Preparation

  10 Copy quote

• A society that is in its higher circles and middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.

  C. Wright Mills

  Smart, Blessed, Men

  18 Copy quote

• For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money. It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based.

  C. Wright Mills

  Military, Risk, Flow

  "The Causes of World War Three". Book by C. Wright Mills, 1958.

  30 Copy quote

• To overcome the academic prose you have first to overcome the academic pose.

  C. Wright Mills

  Overcoming, Firsts, Academic

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.219, Oxford University Press

  35 Copy quote

• Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.

  C. Wright Mills

  Technology, Media, Fiction

  C. Wright Mills (2002). “White Collar: The American Middle Classes”, p.333, Oxford University Press

  13 Copy quote

• What one side considers a defense the other considers a threat. In the vortex of the struggle, each is trapped by his own fearful outlook and by his fear of the other; each moves and is moved within a circle both vicious and lethal.

  C. Wright Mills

  Struggle, Moving, Circles

  12 Copy quote

• Let every man be his own methodologist, let every man be his own theorist

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Theorists, Every Man

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.224, Oxford University Press

  25 Copy quote

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