I have written occasionally on links between my scientific work and political thinking, but not much, because the links seem to me abstract and speculative.

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.

And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life--not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living.

No monster would hold the hurt I see in your eyes or carry the guilt you do every day.

All the things I really like to do are either immoral illegal or fattening.

It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.

Love can become overused.

My father always told me, you can only be your own best. In other words, if you feel you've done your best, you've done well enough.

If you're an MTV fan, you like all the stuff that's on MTV.

Think about everything that you hear, feel everything that you see, love everything that is worthy of love.

I always thought of my work as being animated by a spirit of unhinged generosity.

That's probably why my face was looking so crazy when I was crying [in "Hardball"] because it was some real.