You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

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.

Great books make a great life.

You plan every step of your life, but sometimes you have to let life happen. Change is always unsettling, sometimes scary, but you have to let go. Take a risk. Risk can be fun.

What if we lived like Jesus really did rise from the dead?

Ask a writer what he thinks about critics and the answer you get is similar to what you get when you ask a lamppost how he feels about dogs.

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

When a woman wins an Oscar for telling a story from a woman's point of view, that's going to be the win. That's the moment.

Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.

I'm a food addict, that's my downfall.

So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.

I've always had great faith in people.