To overcome the academic prose you have first to overcome the academic pose.

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

Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is its task and its promise.

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.

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.

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!

Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real.

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.

Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this?

Let every man be his own methodologist, let every man be his own theorist

Simplicity is the key to happiness.

I dreamt I was forced to eat 25lb of marshmallows. When I woke up, my pillow was missing.

One of the things about leadership is that you cannot be a moderate, balanced, thoughtful, careful articulator of policy. You've got to be on the lunatic fringe.

Calvin was very clever. We did the pictures and made the commercial, and that really worked.

The highest purpose in this universe is the creation of an effect.

miracles had to be paid for; only calamity was free.

You and I aren't remembered for what we acquire but for what we contribute.

They are lying every day. They are lying always, and mainly they are lying to their public opinion

Where's Eminem, when is Em coming out, Em this, Em that, 50 this, 50 that... What about Obie?

I am not a dark person and I don't consider myself dark.