The educational system is pretty much geared to passing the next exam. You're educated to pass tests and not to understand.

Everyone engaged in research must have had the experience of working with feverish and prolonged intensity to write a paper which no one else will read or to solve a problem which no one else thinks important and which will bring no conceivable reward - which may only confirm a general opinion that the researcher is wasting his time on irrelevancies.

In the case of [Antonio] Gramsci, the Fascist government agreed that he was a "model intellectual" in [Edward] Said's sense, and for that reason determined, in their words, that "we must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years."

I think that as human beings, we quite naturally take for granted what is similar among human beings and, then, pay attention to what differentiates us. That makes perfect sense for us as human beings.

If you're in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.

Take something you really don't think about: Plastics in the ocean. I mean plastics in the ocean have an enormous ecological effect.

The internet, since it is publicly created, ought to be publicly controlled.