I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.

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 people break off relationships, they break them both from the outside and from within. The external spoils because of circumstances, but the inner [inside] must not spoil.

I've always been into cars. Cars are part of our genetic makeup. It's unavoidable.

If there is a fear of falling, the only safety consists in deliberately jumping.

The worst thing you can do is to sit and brood and feel sorry for yourself. Nor should you feel wrong about doing this, since all of us do from time to time.

I don't live in Hollywood. I don't have celebrities as friends. I like them, but I don't pal around with them. I just live in the Midwest, a real normal world.

I do better on the first three takes; I won't be better at 20 takes.

Just remember that William Blake wasn't even published in his lifetime. Ya gotta keep creating.

It is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity.

I'm never gonna die, never heard of death, energy can never be destroyed only the flesh.

I don't think I would do better books if I wrote full time. I write for amateurish reasons.