Nicaragua was destabilizing Central America, meaning moving in a direction the US didn't like. So Nicaragua was crushed.

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.

The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable.

Public office is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

I am 30, but there are things about me that are still 15.

In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.

To make converts is the natural ambition of everyone.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

As the father of six children, I want to know that when my wife or I drop our kids off at school they will be safe from predators, crime and violence.

I'm not good at accepting help.

Family fun is as necessary to modern living as a kitchen refrigerator.

It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.