People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently …

- C. Wright Mills

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is its task and its pro…

- C. Wright Mills

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

- C. Wright Mills

By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions havi…

- C. Wright Mills

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 …

- C. Wright Mills

Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this?

- C. Wright Mills

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

It is the political task of the social scientist — as of any liberal educator — continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and pu…

- C. Wright Mills

History is the shank of the social sciences.

- C. Wright Mills