When geologists announced the beginning of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, humans destroying the environment, one of the main things they pointed to is the use of plastics in the earth.

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.

I always do like seeing other people dance in their cars. It's one of the things that makes me happy.

There are two great things that we need to find in life: one is love, probably the most important, and the second is work, and they compete with one another from time to time.

I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.

All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages. It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages.

No one has the responsibility to be out to anyone but himself or herself. I made my choice a million years ago.

It's so crazy with the Internet and being able to play shows to people who are actually interested in you. I feel so lucky when that happens.

It is fortunate that diplomats have long noses since they usually cannot see beyond them.

Every citizen, scientists included, has some obligation to be involved in public affairs and politics.

Rather than pushing children to think like adults, we might do better to remember that they are great learners and to try harder to be more like them.