Efforts can succeed over time, and not trying ensures that the worst will happen.

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.

i'm glad to be alive in a world wherehis gently awakening eyesnourish the morning sun.

One of my pa...friends... isn't doing very well.""...Is your friend dying?""...Yes honey, he is.""That's sad.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

I have noticed bakers with swelled hands, and painful, too; in fact the hands of all such workers become much thickened by the constant pressure of kneading the dough.

I have observed in foolish awe The dateless mid-days of the law And seen indifferent justice done By everyone on everyone.

I, unfortunately, take the subway a lot. It's not my preference, but it is my lot in life.

Hatred of producers of wealth still flourishes and has become, in fact, the racism of the intelligentsia.

They must know but little of mankind who can imagine that, after they have been once seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it.

I love music because it's so fecking brilliant. Music is math, and math is the structure of everything and pretty much perfect.

It's easy to direct while acting - there's one less person to argue with.