Finally I decided that since peasants were the largest segment of the world's population, it would be an honorable and worthy career to devote my life to the study of peasants and agriculture.

It's hard to see any institutional structure that stands in the way of the homogenization and simplification of these supply chains in international capitalism, unless it is the nation state.

The power to gossip is more democratically distributed than power, property, and income, and, certainly, than the freedom to speak openly.

In a world of injustice there's going to be dreams of justice.

The world of rumor and gossip is like a privileged world with which a social scientist or an anthropologist can take the temperature of popular aspirations.

The petite bourgeoise and small property in general represent a precious zone of autonomy and freedom in state systems increasingly dominated by large public and private bureaucracies.

The larger the pile of rubble you leave behind, the larger your place in the historical record!

Encouragement of sedentarism is perhaps the oldest "state project, " a project related to the second-oldest state project of taxation.

You should never try and out guess Mother Nature because when you do, you come off second best.

I follow many great religions. Body is my temple. Love is my religion. Peace is my religion. Happiness is my religion.

Jesus Christ is infinitely more than a great teacher and philosopher.

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own.

The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band.

I don't do anything or have any magical secret or something, other than drinking baby's blood, of course.

Mark Jones is mad as a hatter. But, he's great. He's really, really into music. I know he's married and he's got two wonderful children, but his life is music. And he's very clever with it.

The great end of education is, to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulation of others.