As the capacity to coerce declines, it is natural to turn to control of opinion as the basis for authority and domination - a fundamental principle of government already emphasized by David Hume.

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think.

The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.

That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.

Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.

There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.

The world is a very puzzling place. If you're not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else's mind.

Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.

Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.

If you want to control a population... give them a God to worship.

A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language.

When your novel first peeks its head into the world, it will look pretty much like every newborn: blotchy, hairless, and utterly confused.

Teeth aren't pearly, until you smile.

In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country.

You're never going to learn something as profoundly as when it's purely out of curiosity

America's objective in the Middle East is to create democracy in the same way that my goal on a first date to feed women.

Take It From Me: Life's a Struggle but You Can Win

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.

How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?

I do try to experience the emotions as they come, but sometimes it becomes just too much.