Much work is merely a way to make money; much leisure is merely a way to spend it. C. Wright Mills More Quotes by C. Wright Mills More Quotes From C. Wright Mills If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you say will surely obscure them. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift to the coming human hell. C. Wright Mills issuesrealacceptance 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 riskflowmilitary 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 distractionentertainmentway In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as a man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and meanings of human nature. C. Wright Mills issuescuriositymen The immediate cause of World War III is the military preparation of it. C. Wright Mills preparationmilitarywar 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 smartblessedmen To accept opinions is to gain the good solid feeling of being correct without having to think. C. Wright Mills gainsfeelingsthinking 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 mediatechnologyfiction Fate has to do with events in history that are the summary and unintended results of innumerable decisions of innumerable men. C. Wright Mills fatedecisionmen Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system. C. Wright Mills cashrespectshadow Let every man be his own methodologist, let every man be his own theorist C. Wright Mills theoristsevery-manmen I try to be objective. I do not claim to be detached. C. Wright Mills objectivesclaimstrying When white-collar people get jobs, they sell not only their time and energy, but their personalities as well. They sell by the week, or month, their smiles and their kindly gestures, and they must practice that prompt repression of resentment and aggression. C. Wright Mills practicewhitejobs The broadening of the economic order which came to be seated in the individual property owner... dramatized by Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory... "The supremacy of corporate economic power... consolidated by the Supreme Court decision of 1886 which declared that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the corporation... [the New Deal, leading to], within the political arena, as well as in the corporate world itself, competing centers of power that challenged those of the corporate directors. C. Wright Mills politicaldecisionorder 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 imaginationnumbersideas For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end... such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own. C. Wright Mills talkingmenreality Those in authority within institutions and social structures attempt to justify their rule by linking it, as if it were a necessary consequence, with moral symbols, sacred emblems, or legal formulae which are widely believed and deeply internalized. These central conceptions may refer to a god or gods, the 'votes of the majority,' the 'will of the people,' the 'aristocracy of talents or wealth,' to the 'divine right of kings' or to the alleged extraordinary endowment of the person of the ruler himself. C. Wright Mills divine-rightkingspeople What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited. C. Wright Mills visiontryingmen History is the shank of the social sciences. C. Wright Mills social-sciencesocialhistory The principal cause of war is war itself. C. Wright Mills causes-of-warcauseswar
