Much work is merely a way to make money; much leisure is merely a way to spend it.

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?

Live with style and passion

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

I always assumed scientists were free to ask any question, pursue any line of inquiry without fear or reprisal.

Among the wealthy, generosity is often merely a kind of shyness.

We don't want to push our ideas on to customers, we simply want to make what they want.

There's nothing glamorous about being dead.

One of the nicest compliments I would get very often on the street is people would say, 'I love you on 'The Good Wife.' I just can't tell whether I should like you or hate you!'

Life is a precious gift, but we realize this only when we give it to others.

From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented.

I thought that I held the record of most appearances on the Bob Hope Show, but I think - It's Brooke Shields