I've occasionally been asked to talk on Israel-Palestine. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it elicits hysteria in the community.

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.

A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die.

I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls.

To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.

This wasn't a garden,' said Susan presently. 'It was a castle.

I've got to give Larry Bird his due; he was a great player. He knew the game and he was smart.

Enlightenment is an accident, but some activities make you accident-prone.

I drink to feel / I smoke to breathe / Just look what love / Has done to me

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Stop wanting wealth and fame and start wanting instead to do something well about which you are passionate

Leonardo DiCaprio's life is the perfect example of how not to be. I would not wish his life on anybody.