Ever since I've had any political awareness, I've felt either alone or part of a tiny minority.

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.

In the end we have one choice: to suffer well or suffer badly, to reach for or to reject that quality which is termed, equally, by both religious and secular, grace.

Presents can make up for some of the disappointments that life doles out, such as it makes almost no sense and is coming to an end more quickly than ever.

Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed!

Those who preach god, need god Those who preach peace do not have peace Those who preach love do not have love

And, yes, I love the process of building.

The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.

It's one of the secrets of strength: We're so much more likely to find it in the service of others than in service to ourselves.

I think China will do nothing to obstruct it, and they probably will go along with it.

Don't laugh at youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.

You need to have people within your own party that have the wherewithal to stand up to you.