TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion.

Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.

If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture

It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.

If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.

We are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

Everything we know has its origins in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings.

At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.

People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

Once you have learned to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.

I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

You're Missing a hand." And you're missing a brain!

No matter where I am in the world, I will always be back home for Christmas.

I need to rebel against myself. It's the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear.

The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake.

I've signed a few sneakers in my day.

It's better to say too much, than never to say what you need to say again.

When I do my shows, it's really cross-generational. Sometimes there's three generations there.

I'm really, really emotional.

That's why they're in the problem - having the problem they're having. They're not conservative. They're being run by their donors.