In fact, by universal grammar I mean just that system of principles and structures that are the prerequisites for acquisition of language, and to which every language necessarily conforms.

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.

Time is Galleons, little brother.

Music took her somewhere, and I used to wonder where. I thought it was dumb, the way she lived for a collection of sounds, for someone else's words and notes.

...you have been fraternizing with warewolves overmuch! Military men can be terribly bad for one's verbal concatenation!

It's important to read because it's really good for your vocabulary. It's really good for your imagination. I enjoy reading because I find it relaxing.

The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.

When people ask me now if I miss coaching UCLA basketball games, the national championships, the attention, the trophies, and everything that goes with them, I tell them this: I miss the practices.

So, you know, if, if I wanted to get up and just play golf one day, I would just get up and play golf. If I wanted to go to Vegas, I would just get up and go to Vegas.

In America, we celebrate success. We don't apologize for success.

The highest things, the things that really matter, we cannot achieve on our own; we have to accept them as gifts and enter in to the dynamic of the gift, so to speak.

We look down on our scientists if they engage in outside consultation. We implicitly promote the ivory tower.