The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak - that gives it an existential emphasis.

Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.

I love the academy in terms of the life of the mind and the world of ideas. I also love the streets. I love the churches and mosques and synagogues. I love the trade union centers. I love the community centers. I speak regularly at prisons and so forth.

We are who we are because somebody loved us.

I recall coming across a line by the late Charles Tilly when he said, "The conditions for the possibility of social movements have been called into question in the twenty-first century." And I said to myself, my god, a society in history without social movements, for me, is very difficult to live in.

Pleasure, no matter how desirable, is never innocent: it's always presupposing and assuming a certain kind of social order, one usually shot through structures of domination.

If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble.