All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.

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.

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

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?

Peace doesn't mean never offending anyone. Peace means never taking offense from anyone.

I hate the sound of the world outside. Because everybody here can't wait to come and say goodbye...

Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.

I remember pretending to be the characters in the movies when I was a little kid.

I'm a salty, greasy girl. I give every french fry a fair chance. Could you just lay some lard in my belly?

One person's definition of evil is another person's different definition.

Searching nature I taste self but at one tankard, that of my own being.

What does Christmas mean if we can't encourage small children to sit on a stranger's lap?

My father combined many of the elements that were feared in the culture, but also he was a warm figure, a figure we needed. We depended on him to give us a little bit of strength and courage.

Halt shook his head. Frankly, he'd seen sacks of potatoes that could sit a horse better than Erak