Justified by the war on drugs, the United States is in the midst of a prison binge made obvious by the fact that since 1970, the number of people behind bars... has increased 600 percent.

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.

True freedom is in striving through adversities to accomplish all noble things that need to be done so that we may be free from any blame in the end!

I'm not saying that owning a house makes life into some kind of blissful paradise

I think critics are very useful. But I think that they, in a way, betray their position when they stop people looking for themselves.

We all have talents that, sometimes, we never quite fulfill. We're all scared, deep down, but maybe we just need to lay it on the line and explore our abilities and just not be afraid of failing.

Dreams never hurt anybody if you keep working right behind the dreams to make as much of them become real as you can.

When it's raining like this," said Naoko, "it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together.

Things I say have value and I would love for you to value them, however you get it.

I'm always on the go. I love doing things until I hit rock bottom. Then I need my 12 hours of sleep, and I'm on the go again.

Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods.

The planet is about to break out with fever, indeed it may already have, and we [human beings] are the disease. We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles.