C. Wright Mills

"To be a free man and woman requires work, discipline, and courage."

"The first lesson of the sociological imagination is that we must learn to think ourselves away from the familiar routines of our daily lives."

"The crackpot realist takes facts as his God; and if facts are often wrong, well, that is just too bad."

"Questions of power and questions of values are mixed questions."

"The democratic intellect must always work to be free."

"We must become true intellectuals or we perish as a democratic society."

"The function of sociology, as of every science, is first of all to provide a conception of the world that is orderly and systematic."

"In the end, what matters is what you do with your life and how you treat others."

"Knowledge is power, but knowledge is also responsibility."

"The mass media have become the primary instruments of manipulation and control."

"To be fully human requires understanding both ourselves and our times."

"The point of departure for this work is the simple fact that the individual can understand his own experience by locating himself in his period."

"Facts are not sacred things; they are made by men."

"Societies are shaped by human decisions and human action."

"The task of the sociologist is to unveil the ideologies which justify the power of the ruling class."

"Modern men and women feel that their private lives are a series of traps."

"The sociology of knowledge must be conjoined with the political economy of power."

"To be human is to be free and to exercise that freedom in relation to others."

"Any group of human beings is united by its consciousness of a common problem."

"The United States has become a military juggernaut and an economic power."

"What makes America peculiar is its ideology of freedom combined with practice of conformity."

"The public consists of self-governing groups of citizens."

"Only the educated person is free."

"Great thinkers are always willing to challenge the assumptions of their time."

"To understand the present, we must always remember the past."

"Power and knowledge are intertwined in modern societies."

"The intellectual must serve the cause of human freedom."

"History is not inevitably progressive—it depends on human action."

"We are what we do—our character is formed by our actions."

"The truly educated person is one who continues to learn throughout life."