The Very Shaping Of History Now Outpaces

It Is The Political Task Of The Social Scientist — As Of Any Liberal Educator — Continually To Translate Personal Troubles Into Public Issues, And Public Issues Into The Terms Of Their Human Meaning For A Variety Of Individuals. It Is His Task To Display In His Work — And, As An Educator, In His Life As Well — This Kind Of Sociological Imagination. And It Is His Purpose To Cultivate Such Habits Of Mind Among The Men And Women Who Are Publicly Exposed To Him. To Secure These Ends Is To Secure Reason And Individuality, And To Make These The Predominant Values Of A Democratic Society.

For We Cannot Adequately Understand 'man' As An Isolated Biological Creature, As A Bundle Of Reflexes Or A Set Of Instincts, As An 'intelligible Field' Or A System In And Of Itself. Whatever Else He May Be, Man Is A Social And An Historical Actor Who Must Be Understood, If At All, In Close And Intricate Interplay With Social And Historical Structures

Any Contemporary Political Re-statement Of Liberal And Socialist Goals Must Include As Central The Idea Of A Society In Which All Men Would Become Men Of Substantive Reason, Whose Independent Reasoning Would Have Structural Consequences For Their Societies, Its History And Thus For Their Own Life Fates.

What I Am Asserting Is That In This Particular Epoch A Conjunction Of Historical Circumstances Has Led To The Rise Of An Elite Of Power; That The Men Of The Circles Composing This Elite, Severally And Collectively, Now Make Such Key Decisions As Are Made; And That, Given The Enlargement And The Centralization Of The Means Of Power Now Available, The Decisions That They Make And Fail To Make Carry More Consequences For More People Than Has Ever Been The Case In The World History Of Mankind

The Principal Cause Of War Is War Itself.