The book [Manufacturing Consent] itself is then devoted to a series of case studies, selected, we hope [with Edward Herman], to offer a fair and in fact rather severe test of those conclusions.

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.

Choose joy! Joy is a choice. Joy is a witness. Joy is a therapy. Joy is a habit. If Jesus, who drank so deeply of the world's sorrow, could be filled with so much fun and laughter, then so can I.

She was a prism through with sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum

I know who I am.

I don't want easy, just possible.

If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.

As soon as rules were made, names were given. There are already many names. One must know when it is enough.

In a religiously uniform culture, it is natural for people to take for granted the truth of the prevailing religion and its associated metaphysical propositions.

I don't know if I believe in God, but I know I believe in the devil. I have met him.

It is possible to be clean in a dirty world.

I know what I do not know.