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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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C. Wright Mills
Age: 45 †
Born: 1916
Born: August 28
Died: 1962
Died: March 20
Sociologist
University Teacher
Waco
Texas
Charles Wright Mills
Interest
Interests
Balancing
Wish
Machines
Regulated
Political
Notion
Automatic
Government
Americans
Wishing
Issues
Cling
Economy
Disturbed
Sort
Competing
Moral
Machine

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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.
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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.
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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.
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All politics is a struggle for power the ultimate kind of power is violence.
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No one can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance, truly powerful . . .
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IBM Plus Reality Plus Humanism = Sociology.
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According to your belief [Christian clergy], my kind of man — secular, prideful, agnostic and all the rest of it — is among the damned. I'm on my own. You've got your God.
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Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.
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Prestige is the shadow of money and power.
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Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this?
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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.
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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.
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The means of effective communication are being expropriated from the intellectual worker.
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To overcome the academic prose you have first to overcome the academic pose.
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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.
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The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values.
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The immediate cause of World War III is the military preparation of it.
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To accept opinions is to gain the good solid feeling of being correct without having to think.
C. Wright Mills
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I try to be objective. I do not claim to be detached.
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My plans have always exceeded my capacities and energies
C. Wright Mills