To Accept Opinions Is To Gain The

By The Power Elite, We Refer To Those Political, Economic, And Military Circles Which As An Intricate Set Of Overlapping Cliques Share Decisions Having At Least National Consequences. In So Far As National Events Are Decided, The Power Elite Are Those Who Decide Them.

The Economy - Once A Great Scatter Of Small Productive Units In Autonomous Balance, Has Become Dominated By Two Or Three Hundred Giant Corporations, Administratively And Politically Interrelated... The Political Order, Once A Decentralized Set Of Several Dozen States With A Weak Spinal Cord, Has Become A Centralized Executive Establishment Which Has Taken Up Into Itself Many Powers Previously Scattered... The Military Order, Once A Slim Establishment In A Context Of Distrust Fed By State Militia, Has Become The Largest And Most Expensive Feature Of Government.

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.

Seldom Aware Of The Intricate Connection Between The Patterns Of Their Own Lives And The Course Of World History, Ordinary People Do Not Usually Know What This Connection Means For The Kind Of People They Are Becoming And For The Kind Of History-making In Which They Might Take Part.

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