I happened to go to a school when I was a kid and that's all we did, pursue our own interests. It was kind of structured so you ended up knowing everything you were supposed to know, arithmetic, Latin, whatever it was. But almost always it was under your own initiative.

It's been a real success - one of the great business successes in the United States - to break down organization, to separate people too: it's part of consumerism. If you can drive people toward individual consumption, that's the highest goal in life. And furthermore, drive them into debt so they're trapped. You don't have to worry about a democracy function because people are trapped and they're alone.

The IMF economists were doubtless shaken by the extreme failures of their prescriptions over many years, and by the collapse of the intellectual edifice of economic theory on which they were relying.

In a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike - which means the end for all of us.

In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT's Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.