Quotes by C. Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills

American sociologist

Lived from: 1916 - 1962

Category: History and sociology Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 28 august 1916 Died: 20 march 1962

  • Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.
  • 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.
  • America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.
  • A society in which all men and women would become people of substantive reason, whose independent reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates.
  • The mass production of distraction is now as much a part of the American way of life as the mass production of automobiles.
  • Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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  • A society in which all men and women would become people of substantive reason, whose independent reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates.
    The Sociological Imagination (1959)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.
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  • An expensive arms race, under cover of the military metaphysic, and in a paranoid atmosphere of fright, is an economically attractive business. To many utopian capitalists, it has become the Business Way of American Life.
    The Causes of World War Three (1960)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • 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.
    The Power Elite (1956)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • 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.
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  • Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real.
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • Fate has to do with events in history that are the summary and unintended results of innumerable decisions of innumerable men.
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • 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.
    The Power Elite (1956)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • Here's to the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published and widely distributed in the Soviet Union. On that day the USSR will have achieved democracy!
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • If we accept the Greek's definition of the idiot as an altogether private man, then we must conclude that many American citizens are now idiots. And I should not be surprised, although I don't know, if there were some such idiots even in Germany.
    The British Journal of Sociology Structure of Power in America, Vol. 9 (March 1958)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • 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.
    Foreword, The Marxists (1962)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • In the formulas of 'personnel experts', men and women are to be shaped into the 'well rounded, acceptable, effective personality.' Just like small proprietors, they cannot higgle over prices, which are fixed, or 'judge the market' and accordingly buy wisely.
    White Collar :The American Middle Classes (1951)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • Kindness and friendliness become aspects of personalized service or of public relations of big firms, rationalized to further the sale of something. With anonymous insincerity, the Successful Person thus makes an instrument of his own appearance and personality.
    White Collar :The American Middle Classes (1951)
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • Much work is merely a way to make money; much leisure is merely a way to spend it.
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.
    The Sociological Imagination
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • 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.
    White Collar :The American Middle Classes (1951) Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.
    ― C. Wright Mills
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  • One could translate the 555 pages of The Social System into about 150 pages of straightforward English. The result would not be very impressive.
    The Sociological Imagination (1959) P. 31, commenting on the verbosity of the chief wo
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  • People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages.
    ― C. Wright Mills
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What are the most famous quotes from C. Wright Mills?

The two most famous quotes from C. Wright Mills are:

  • "A society in which all men and women would become people of substantive reason, whose independent reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates."
  • "America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub."

When did C. Wright Mills live?

C. Wright Mills was born in 1916 and died in the year 1962.