Violence can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can also provoke violence in response, and often does.

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.

Coffee is to a Writer as Blood is to a Vampire!

Because I want to be treated as equals, not sequels.

We always have enough to be happy if we are enjoying what we do have- and not worrying about what we don't have.

The paradox is that when resistance is fully accepted, the resistance disappears.

Life is an extravagant gown, riddled with lice.

Prolonged inflation never 'stimulates' the economy. On the contrary, it unbalances, disrupts, and misdirects production and employment.

He slept that night thinking of loves and lighthouses. That one love might shine to bring all loves home.

I read 'Time', 'Newsweek' and 'The Economist'.

I appreciate the people there thinking about me, and I look forward to coming back to Paris for that occasion.

I don't think I've changed anything, but I hope that by my talks I have encouraged people in their practice. That's as much as any of us can do.