[O]ne could translate the 555 pages of The Social System into about 150 pages of straightforward English. The result would not be very impressive. C. Wright Mills More Quotes by C. Wright Mills More Quotes From C. Wright Mills 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 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 political-will frustration knowledge Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. C. Wright Mills society anger understanding 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 issues imagination men 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 circles military power 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 imagination two promise 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 self believe people 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 winning father 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 want men world 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 ordinary mean people 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 personality doe men 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 actors historical men Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this? C. Wright Mills sociology asking may Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real. C. Wright Mills revolution real 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 circles struggle moving To overcome the academic prose you have first to overcome the academic pose. C. Wright Mills academic overcoming firsts 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 freedom opportunity inspirational 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 white men To say that you can 'have experience,' means, for one thing, that your past plays into and affects your present, and that it defines your capacity for future experience. As a social scientist, you have to control this rather elaborate interplay, to capture what you experience and sort it out; only in this way can you hope to use it to guide and test your reflection, and in the process shape yourself as an intellectual craftsman C. Wright Mills reflection mean past Above all, do not give up your moral and political autonomy by accepting in somebody else's terms the illiberal practicality of the bureaucratic ethos or the liberal practicality of the moral scatter. Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues and in terms of the problems of history making. C. Wright Mills ethos issues giving-up
