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.

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.

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?

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

One could be happy not only without love, but despite it.

Prayer without faith is as futile as a body without breathe.

The person in whose presence you stay in the secrets will determine where you will stay in the open.

An honourable man is fair even to his enemies

Never get lost in the crowd. Climb a mountain for a better view.

The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

Doing funny scary is something that is rarely good and rarely works, and it's also something that's incredibly hard to market.

I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

On another night, they'd have won 2-2.