There are some very general ideas that people can keep in mind; they're kind of truisms. It's only worth mentioning them because they're always denied.

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.

God is the only book that can never be touched, open and seen.

...you found me in my lonely labyrinth and like Beatrice, led me out of my own hell...

Ruby describes the decorations at the banquet. 'It was like little gardens of rhapsody on every table. It was divine.

Find that pursuit that will energize you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don't, you are working.

Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.

Politicians have to make unpopular decisions. Schwarzenegger is going to understand the nature of his job. I wish him good luck, he's going to need it. It's going to be difficult for him.

We have to make our country rich again before we can make it great again.

Rather than making that a good project, I like to make the kinds of films that children can understand in five minutes what the film is about.

Writing involves an acceptance of being on the margin, the threshold, a galvanization out of received notions into a more activated, kinetic, often perilous, seeing.

I have the greater glory of God, the history is His story, that He is in charge and ultimately He knows what He's doing.