There's a tremendous amount of language loss. Most of the attention is given to indigenous languages, which makes sense, but some of the most dramatic language loss is in Europe.

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.

Son, are you happy? I don't mean to pry, but do you dream of Heaven?Have you ever wanted to die?

It's not just the wounded who suffer.

My favorite animal is steak.

People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent.

I wouldn't call myself a shut-in. I have the ability to leave my home; I just choose not to. But because I'm such a homebody, it's important to be surrounded by things I love.

Happiness is so rarely a part of my vocabulary, because for me it's so fleeting

When people criticize the free market, they are usually complaining about what happens when you intervene in the free market.

Now we are expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help there is, and we scarcely anything.

I am billed as a humorist, but of course I am a tragedian at heart.

The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned