Hume's paradox does hold: power is in the hands of the governed. If they refuse to accept it, you're in trouble, no matter how many guns you have.

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.

Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion

The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature, with an open mind.

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here.

I have nothing against old people; I want to be one myself one day.

Willem de Kooning paintings are a language to be learned. When they were first shown, they were ridiculed as being just drips and splatters and splashes. You had to learn how to read them.

The Western model for a meeting is you have an agenda and you come in and everyone says things.

Gratitude can sometimes be as annoying as whininess.

Thoughts - even fears - were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice and once given that weight, they could crush you.

The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go.

Photography is very subjective. Photography is not a document on which a report can be made. It is a subjective document. Photography is a false witness, a lie.