We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.

Work can be undertaken to create an authentic independent political party, a real party, based on popular participation from the ground up, not a top-down candidate producing organization like the two official parties, working from school boards to state legislatures and beyond. Not easy in the regressive U.S. political system, but not impossible.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

You can see it in the worship of [Ronald] Reagan, which portrays him as somebody who saved us from government. Actually he was an apostle of big government.

I don't have time, you know - I want to be able to get it [information] instantly on the internet and not have to think about it. Well, there is that phenomenon as well.

I don't really see what can be said about the role of faculty members, or universities, beyond the truisms voiced earlier, and their elaboration in various domains, ranging from focused intellectual pursuits to the concerns of the larger society and future generations.

Syria is bad enough, it's a pretty terrible atrocity. But there are much worse ones in the world. So for example, the worst atrocities in the past decade have been in the Congo, the Eastern Congo, where maybe 5 million people have been killed.