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People With Advantages Are Loath To Believe That They Just Happen To Be People With Advantages. They Come Readily To Define Themselves As Inherently Worthy Of What They Possess; They Come To Believe Themselves 'naturally' Elite; And, In Fact, To Imagine Their Possessions And Their Privileges As Natural Extensions Of Their Own Elite Selves.

-C. Wright Mills

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People With Advantages Are

C. Wright Mills

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People With Advantages Are Loath To Believe That They Just Happen To Be People With Advantages. They Come Readily To Define Themselves As Inherently Worthy Of What They Possess; They Come To Believe Themselves 'naturally' Elite; And, In Fact, To Imagine Their Possessions And Their Privileges As Natural Extensions Of Their Own Elite Selves.

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A Society That Is In Its Higher Circles And Middle Levels Widely Believed To Be A Network Of Smart Rackets Does Not Produce Men With An Inner Moral Sense; A Society That Is Merely Expedient Does Not Produce Men Of Conscience. A Society That Narrows The Meaning Of 'success' To The Big Money And In Its Terms Condemns Failure As The Chief Vice, Raising Money To The Plane Of Absolute Value, Will Produce The Sharp Operator And The Shady Deal. Blessed Are The Cynical, For Only They Have What It Takes To Succeed.

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.

The Professional Celebrity, Male And Female, Is The Crowning Result Of The Star System Of A Society That Makes A Fetish Of Competition. In America, This System Is Carried To The Point Where A Man Who Can Knock A Small White Ball Into A Series Of Holes In The Ground With More Efficiency Than Anyone Else Thereby Gains Social Access To The President Of The United States.

The Broadening Of The Economic Order Which Came To Be Seated In The Individual Property Owner... Dramatized By Jefferson's Purchase Of The Louisiana Territory... "the Supremacy Of Corporate Economic Power... Consolidated By The Supreme Court Decision Of 1886 Which Declared That The Fourteenth Amendment Protected The Corporation... [the New Deal, Leading To], Within The Political Arena, As Well As In The Corporate World Itself, Competing Centers Of Power That Challenged Those Of The Corporate Directors.

Much Work Is Merely A Way To Make Money; Much Leisure Is Merely A Way To Spend It.

To Overcome The Academic Prose You Have First To Overcome The Academic Pose.

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!

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.

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.

For We Cannot Adequately Understand 'man' As An Isolated Biological Creature, As A Bundle Of Reflexes Or A Set Of Instincts, As An 'intelligible Field' Or A System In And Of Itself. Whatever Else He May Be, Man Is A Social And An Historical Actor Who Must Be Understood, If At All, In Close And Intricate Interplay With Social And Historical Structures

The Means Of Effective Communication Are Being Expropriated From The Intellectual Worker.

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

Freedom Is Not Merely The Opportunity To Do As One Pleases; Neither Is It Merely The Opportunity To Choose Between Set Alternatives. Freedom Is, First Of All, The Chance To Formulate The Available Choices, To Argue Over Them -- And Then, The Opportunity To Choose.

To Say That You Can 'have Experience,' Means, For One Thing, That Your Past Plays Into And Affects Your Present, And That It Defines Your Capacity For Future Experience. As A Social Scientist, You Have To Control This Rather Elaborate Interplay, To Capture What You Experience And Sort It Out; Only In This Way Can You Hope To Use It To Guide And Test Your Reflection, And In The Process Shape Yourself As An Intellectual Craftsman

For The Corporation Executives, The Military Metaphysic Often Coincides With Their Interest In A Stable And Planned Flow Of Profit; It Enables Them To Have Their Risk Underwritten By Public Money; It Enables Them Reasonably To Expect That They Can Exploit For Private Profit Now And Later, The Risky Research Developments Paid For By Public Money. It Is, In Brief, A Mask Of The Subsidized Capitalism From Which They Extract Profit And Upon Which Their Power Is Based.

The Market Is Sovereign And In The Magic Economy Of The Small Entrepreneur There Is No Authoritarian Center... In The Political Sphere... The Equilibrium Of Powers Prevails, And Hence There Is No Chance Of Despotism.

To Accept Opinions Is To Gain The Good Solid Feeling Of Being Correct Without Having To Think.

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.

Every Revolution Has Its Counterrevolution - That Is A Sign The Revolution Is For Real.

To Have Peace And Not War, The Drift Toward A War Economy, As Facilitated By The Moves And The Demands Of The Sophisticated Conservatives, Must Be Stopped; To Have Peace Without Slump, The Tactics And Policies Of The Practical Right Must Be Overcome. The Political And Economic Power Of Both Must Be Broken. The Power Of These Giants Of Main Drift Is Both Economically And Politically Anchored; Both Unions And An Independent Labor Party Are Needed To Struggle Effective.

Those In Authority Within Institutions And Social Structures Attempt To Justify Their Rule By Linking It, As If It Were A Necessary Consequence, With Moral Symbols, Sacred Emblems, Or Legal Formulae Which Are Widely Believed And Deeply Internalized. These Central Conceptions May Refer To A God Or Gods, The 'votes Of The Majority,' The 'will Of The People,' The 'aristocracy Of Talents Or Wealth,' To The 'divine Right Of Kings' Or To The Alleged Extraordinary Endowment Of The Person Of The Ruler Himself.

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History Is The Shank Of The Social Sciences.

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I Try To Be Objective. I Do Not Claim To Be Detached.

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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People With Advantages Are Loath To Believe That They Just Happen To Be People With Advantages. They Come Readily To Define Themselves As Inherently Worthy Of What They Possess; They Come To Believe Themselves 'naturally' Elite; And, In Fact, To Imagine Their Possessions And Their Privileges As Natural Extensions Of Their Own Elite Selves.

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Let Every Man Be His Own Methodologist, Let Every Man Be His Own Theorist

My Plans Have Always Exceeded My Capacities And Energies

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People With Advantages Are Loath To Believe That They Just Happen To Be People With Advantages.

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The Very Shaping Of History Now Outpaces The Ability Of Men To Orient Themselves In Accordance With Cherished Values.

The Immediate Cause Of World War Iii Is The Military Preparation Of It.

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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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.

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.

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 . . .

Whatever Sociology May Be, It Is The Result Of Constantly Asking The Question, What Is The Meaning Of This?

As A Social And As A Personal Force, Religion Has Become A Dependent Variable. It Does Not Originate; It Reacts. It Does Not Denounce; It Adapts. It Does Not Set Forth New Models Of Conduct And Sensibility; It Imitates. Its Rhetoric Is Without Deep Appeal; The Worship It Organizes Is Without Piety. It Has Become Less A Revitalization Of The Spirit In Permanent Tension With The World Than A Respectable Distraction From The Sourness Of Life.

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