It makes sense to work towards a better world, but it doesn't make any sense to have illusions about what the real world is.

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.

I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.

You have to laugh at yourself, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't.

I'm for prayer in the schools because ritual and ceremony are calming and civilizing, and the little fartlings should be tamped down whenever possible.

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

Neither is detrimental, but the mystical kundalini is a bit more raucous.

The cow knows not what her tail is worth till she has lost it.

Sometimes your best isn't good enough

(His) sadness grew; it became a rock inside him, pulling him down. He carried the sadness everywhere, morning, noon, and night. It hurt to breathe.

My inner motivation is to make the world a better place; the bad guy and the good guy think the same thing.

it is midnight no magical bewitching hour for me