States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power

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.

Laughter lightens my heart and therefore heals my soul as well.

There is nothing more lonely than a true artist.

I reached up with my finger and traced the scar over my eyebrow, remembering when that was the greatest hurt I'd ever known.

This is what I love to see--different branches of law enforcement at each other's throats. It gives the bad guys the head start they need, which in turn gives us all job security.

When you're given a song, it's my job to record the lyrics, story and emotion, and make everyone who is listening to the song believe that it was my words and experience.

I feel like I'm creeping closer to finding the situation that triggers songwriting, which is obviously an extreme of an emotion.

I am not taking legal action against any team-mate.

I don't think it would be crazy to have a model or an entity model on the Reconstruction Finance Corp.

And indeed, no man has found his religion until he has found that for which he must sell his goods and his life.

Records and achievements are made to be broken.