You had workers' movements. You had left organizations, the Communist Party, that were mobilizing in profoundly powerful ways to basically address the great injustices of capitalism.

The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.

Think of the question of mass incarceration. Think of the coding that the Republican Party has used for years, whether they're talking about Obama or blacks or Willie Horton.

Getting ahead cannot be the only motive that motivates people. You have to imagine what a good life is.

Collective freedom provides the basic conditions for people to narrate their own lives, hold power accountable, and embrace a capacious notion of human dignity.

The present generation has been born into a throwaway society of consumers in which both goods and young people are increasingly objectified and disposable.

The ideology of hardness and cruelty runs through American culture like an electric current.

America has become amnesiac - a country in which forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated.

War is one of the nation's most honored virtues, and its militaristic values now bear down on almost every aspect of American life.

It is precisely through the indeterminate nature of history that resistance becomes possible and politics refuses any guarantees and remains open.

Under neoliberalism, culture appears to have largely abandoned its role as a site of critique.

My poetic aspirationIs to become, A Jack of all stylesAnd a master of pun.

No matter what happens, you can make it. Like a fist tightened as hard as possible, you can always apply more.

The true test is wonwhen being togetherwithout saying a wordis everything.

And of course, I absolutely loved making Lost in Space as a kid.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

It is equally easy, initially, for either a man or a woman to attain enlightenment, what we would call liberation or self-realization.

God creates the world anew in each moment.

Making 'Beloved' was an awesome experience.

I've always been obsessed with things that are half animal and half human - like mermaids and Minotaurs - because they are trapped in an animal body. And I felt trapped in my own life.

Music seems to hold everything together. It seems to make things not so chaotic sometimes. It seems to make things make more sense sometimes.