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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.

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
Struggle
Fearful
Sides
Circle
Within
Moves
Vortex
Moving
Circles
Lethal
Fear
Defense
Considers
Threat
Outlook
Moved
Vicious
Side
Trapped

More quotes by C. Wright Mills

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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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You can never really understand an individual unless you also understand the society,historical time period in which they live,personal troubles, and social issues
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Any contemporary political re-statement of liberal and socialist goals must include as central the idea of a society in which all men would become men of substantive reason, whose independent reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates.
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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.
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Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real.
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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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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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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.
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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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To overcome the academic prose you have first to overcome the academic pose.
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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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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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The mass production of distraction is now as much a part of the American way of life as the mass production of automobiles.
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Let every man be his own methodologist, let every man be his own theorist
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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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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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In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as a man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and meanings of human nature.
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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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My plans have always exceeded my capacities and energies
C. Wright Mills