Every revolution has its counterrevolution — that is a sign the revolution is for real.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba, ch. 3 (introduction) (1960)
Quotations by:
Mills, C. Wright
They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out — except war — which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war — as they used to be. For they still believe that “winning” means something, although they never tell us what.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
The Causes of World War Three (1958)
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The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
The Power Elite (1956)
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The entrepreneur, in the classic image, was supposed to have taken a risk, not only with his money but with his very career; but once the founder of a business has taken the big jump he does not usually take serious risks as he comes to enjoy the accumulation of advantages that lead him into great fortune. If there is any risk, someone else is usually taking it. Of late, that someone else […] has been the government of the United States. If a middle-class businessman is in debt for $50,000, he may well be in trouble. But if a man manages to get into debt for $2 million, his creditors, if they can, may well find it convenient to produce chances for his making money in order to repay them.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
The Power Elite (1956)
(Source)
Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
The Power Elite, 4.3 (1956)
We simply must believe that the American rich are happy, else our confidence in the whole endeavor might be shaken. For of all the possible values of human society, one and only one is [the] truly acceptable goal of man in America. That goal is money, and let there be no sour grapes about it from the losers.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
The Power Elite, 7.4 (1956)
America — a conservative country without any conservative ideology — appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality. The second-rate mind is in command of the ponderously spoken platitude. In the liberal rhetoric, vagueness, and in the conservative mood, irrationality, are raised to principle. Public relations and the official secret, the trivializing campaign and the terrible fact clumsily accomplished, are replacing the reasoned debate of political ideas in the privately incorporated economy, the military ascendancy, and the political vacuum of modern America.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
The Power Elite, ch. 14 “The Conservative Mood” (1956)
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These executives, who have risen to the top, have come to be responsible trustees, impartial umpires, and expert brokers for a plurality of economic interests, including those of all the millions of small property holders who hold stock in the great American enterprises, but also the wage workers and the consumers who benefit from the great flow of goods and services. These executives, it is held, are responsible for the refrigerator in the kitchen and the automobile in the garage — as well as all the planes and bombs that now guard Americans from instant peril. […] Full of the know-how that made America great; efficient, straightforward, honest, the chief executives, it is often said, ought really to be allowed to run the government, for if only such men were in charge there would be no waste, no corruption, no infiltration.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]
The Power Elite, ch. 6 (1956)
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