The person that always wins, that's the other thing. The monkey picking stocks always wins.

If you want to defend torture, well then go ahead. But please spare me any sermons about the law ever again.

We're in an historic drought, and that demands unprecedented action.

We cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.

Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.

California became the last state in the west to regulate groundwater usage. The state's first-ever mandatory water restrictions soon followed.

We now operate in a world in which we can assume neither competence nor good faith from the authorities. The consequences of this simple, devastating realization define American life.

Donald Trump is not going anywhere. And we see as calculated as these are, he has a knack for telling a certain segment of a base what they want.

Climate change is the biggest governing challenge we face. It's the biggest governing challenge I think we've ever faced.

The backlash to [Sarah] Palin's comments was swift, with veterans and veterans' groups criticizing the apparent politicization of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Inequality and hierarchy are natural, but that doesn't mean they are right, that doesn't mean there is isn't a productive tension between those forces and the forces of equality.

The fear of God is a fierce faith.

Not by discovering new wow things you are able to understand the truth about nature, but by changing the very fundamental way of perceiving anything you've ever seen in daily life.

Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.

I want a president who can handle a cream soda.

From an evolutionary standpoint you can't just wipe everything out and start over, and I don't think you can do it in the school system either.

Aren't all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

I believe an international criminal court is very much to be desired.

People always come up to me and say, 'you should do standup.' It's nice to discover things about yourself. That keeps everything lively and fun.

What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term? In a word: culture.