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Quote by C. Wright Mills

“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.”

Quote by C. Wright Mills

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C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills was an American sociologist known for his research on power structures and social conflict. His work emphasized the impact of social structures on individual lives and introduced the concept of 'the sociological imagination'. more

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“The point is that we are among those who cannot get their mouths around all the little Yeses that add up to tacit acceptance of a world run by crackpot realists and subject to blind drift. And that, you see, is something to which we do belong; we belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting. Our minds are not yet captive.”

WorldMindLittlesStillsRunningSubjectsAcceptanceCapableMouthsBlindAddRealistCaptivesRejectingTacitCrackpots
Book:C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings
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“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.”

PeopleIfsMayPersonsSocialWealthMoralTalentDivineKingsAuthorityConsequenceVoteInstitutionsSacredMajorityStructureExtraordinarySymbolsJustifyConceptionRulersAristocracyEndowmentEmblemsSocial StructureDivine RightDivine Right Of Kings
Author:C. Wright Mills
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“The economy - once a great scatter of small productive units in autonomous balance, has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated... The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered... The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government.”

TwoStatesGovernmentPoliticalOrderThreeEconomyTakenMilitaryBalanceHundredWeakCorporationsFeaturesGiantsExpensiveProductiveExecutivesFedsEstablishmentDozenUnitsDistrustCordsMilitiaSlimAutonomousSpinal Cord
Author:C. Wright Mills
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“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.”

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Author:C. Wright Mills
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