There is kind of a fundamental conformity, which is a virtual requirement to enter into the media.

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.

Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is believing you're worthy of the trip.

You should employ your little grey cells.

Looking for the perfect day is not going to make us happy, because that day isn't going to come.

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.

Now, I have big-money offers on three movies, and I have director approval. That's kind of scary,' he says. 'No directors have been attached. That's a lot of pressure on me

...to invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know

It may be concluded that a pure democracy . . . can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction.

Only sometimes I try to think about it in context. When I think about the context of, "Oh, I'm this or that," in this society, that's one of the terms.

Don't cry for a man who's left you--the next one may fall for your smile.