The country was founded on the principle that primary role of government is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains.

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.

When women agree with me I always do the other thing

All you need to build a house, Is blood and bricks and plaster.

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

Both of my parents are professors and everyone in my family has some fabulous degree of something or another and I couldn't get into college because I didn't know a language.

In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.

In retrospect Hank I don't know why I spent four years writing this book when I could have just made a hit sing-a-ma-jig album.

What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

To measure is to know.

Ask for what you want. Believe that you deserve it, and then allow Life to give it to you.

As a matter of fact my, my very first time singing when I was two and a half, three, was in church. So, ahm, church is very, very much a part of who I am.