History is the shank of the social sciences.

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?

While the truth is putting on its shoes, the lie becomes a president!

Haji Ali taught me to...slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

Most science is only high falutin' nature studies.

The speculator is not an investor.

I don't cook gumbo, but I just know it's a lot of good ingredients in it. And, with a movie, you got to have all those ingredients.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

I think it's very dangerous for an actor to take [shooting] too seriously because I think it could really damage you if you do that.

The truth only irritates those it enlightens, but does not convert.

God will come into your plans. But the choice is yours whether you allow Him to begin it, or force Him to end it.

I worked at restaurants and coffee shops and babysitting and just whatever I could do to make money.