On abortion: We are talking about ambiguous issues of a complicated kind where you have to balance conflicting interests and concerns.

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.

Discipline sets you free.

A problem's worst nightmare is a solution. Be the solution!

It's better to shut a fool's mouth with sarcasm rather than cursing him back.

Some things can be recovered. Some things can be restored. But some lost things, we seek forever.

All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It's scary.

I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.

The first observation of cancer cells in the smear of the uterine cervix gave me one of the greatest thrills I ever experienced during my scientific career.

I basically had the idea when I was 18 that I wanted to write my own songs. I knew it was going to be a long, tough road, and I was like, if I just begin now, by the time I'm 40, I'll be good at it.

Can I ask you a question?" "You already have." He paused, considering. "Can I ask you two questions, then?" "You already have.

I live a generally quiet life, as it were.