My Plans Have Always Exceeded My Capacities

Freedom Is Not Merely The Opportunity To Do As One Pleases; Neither Is It Merely The Opportunity To Choose Between Set Alternatives. Freedom Is, First Of All, The Chance To Formulate The Available Choices, To Argue Over Them -- And Then, The Opportunity To Choose.

Above All, Do Not Give Up Your Moral And Political Autonomy By Accepting In Somebody Else's Terms The Illiberal Practicality Of The Bureaucratic Ethos Or The Liberal Practicality Of The Moral Scatter. Know That Many Personal Troubles Cannot Be Solved Merely As Troubles, But Must Be Understood In Terms Of Public Issues And In Terms Of The Problems Of History Making.

What We Experience In Various And Specific Milieux, I Have Noted, Is Often Caused By Structural Changes. Accordingly, To Understand The Changes Of Many Personal Milieux We Are Required To Look Beyond Them. And The Number And Variety Of Such Structural Changes Increase As The Institutions Within Which We Live Become More Embracing And More Intricately Connected With One Another. To Be Aware Of The Idea Of Social Structure And To Use It With Sensibility Is To Be Capable Of Tracing Such Linkages Among A Great Variety Of Milieux. To Be Able To Do That Is To Possess The Sociological Imagination

Much Work Is Merely A Way To Make Money; Much Leisure Is Merely A Way To Spend It.

The Means Of Effective Communication Are Being Expropriated From The Intellectual Worker.