For the past century or so that's [ Monroe Doctrine] actually been true, but it's declining very significantly.

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.

My get-up-and-go often leaves without me.

Nobody makes anybody enlightened.Just tell them what you want to say, then let them decide for themselves.

Love is a hole in the heart.

People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can't be attacked.

... women are more quiet. They don't feel called to mount a barrel and harangue by the hour every time they imagine they have produced an idea.

Every director is different, but the insights from new people on set give you a different opinion and perspective, which is always embraced, in some way.

I don't have joy in watching myself, whereas, actually, I quite like listening to my own music.

Though a non-co-operator, I shall gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me mahatma and to touch my feet.

People are interested in examining the way we consume narratives.

Never trust a man who says he is only a little crooked, and that the crookedness is exercised in your interest.