C. Wright Mills

"The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society."

"The first lesson of the sociological imagination is this: the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period."

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

"The true intellectual is a person whose interests are not confined within a specialty but who has a passion for ideas."

"Power is not of a man. Power is always of a man, of groups, of institutions, of some representative of institutions."

"The task of the intellectual is to make morally urgent what may seem politically impossible."

"Men are not trapped by their biographies but can change themselves."

"A man may have status and not have power, or he may be powerful and lack status."

"The great tradition of public man has been the tradition of the intellectual."

"Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles of the individual."

"The sociological imagination is the most fruitful form of this imagination of ours."

"Ignore those who say it is naive to think you can change the world."

"The point is that they are trying to rationalize and to justify the system as it is."

"Freedom is not merely the absence of domination of others."

"What intellectuals ought to do is to question the very foundations of their societies."

"I have come to believe that the true and radical divorce between an intellectual and a public is a formal public."

"The human meaning of social science is that it enables us to understand what's at stake."

"The individual conscience is the only real basis of any moral authority."

"In the last analysis, 'the public' of which we speak does not and cannot exist in the world today."

"What is happening in the world today cannot be understood without reference to history."

"Men are free to make history, but they do not make it just as they please."

"The study of history is the study of human freedom."

"War and economic competition have become the most salient features of this century."

"The values of the intellectual must be one of candor and intellectual integrity."

"We should distinguish between problems and issues. A problem is personal. An issue is public."

"The nature of power in modern society is the possession of effective instruments."

"Each person is a biography—a history that includes his own history."

"Only by understanding history can we understand the present."

"The sociological imagination is the capacity to relate the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self."

"In truth, neither the life of the individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both."