Master Tasks for Intellectuals

1. To define the reality of the human condition and to make our definitions public
2. To confront the new facts of history-making  in our time, and their meaning for the problem of political responsibility.
3. Continually to investigate the causes of war, and among them to locate the decisions and defaults of elite circles.
4. To release the human imagination, to explore all the alternatives now open to the human community by transcending both the mere exhortation of grand principle and the mere opportunistic reaction.
5. To demand full information of relevance to human destiny and the end of decision made in irresponsible secrecy.
6. To cease being the intellectual dupes of political patrioteers.

– C. Wright Mills