We could not bring democracy to South Vietnam at a cost that we were willing to accept. So it was a disaster. That' is the left extreme.

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.

Art must be unaesthetic in the extreme, useless and impossible to justify.

I believe in the power of one.

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

I think the exercise of trying to figure out how to simplify concepts has been incredibly helpful to me over the last 13 years of teaching and I hope my students have benefited from it.

When I first joined SAG, there was another John Reilly. My dad was John Reilly, too, but growing up I was John John. Nobody in life calls me John C. It's more like, "Hey you, Step Brother!"

To draw true beauty shows a master's hand.

I feel like my joy in life has intensified, (and) my compassion for people has just strengthened. I have compassion that I wouldn't have had before.

Improvisation helps because you get what's on the page and you make it a little more palatable to your tongue. And that's the beauty of creating and being spontaneous. That's the way I love to work.

Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.

Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!