For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.

The most extreme types, like Murray Rothbard, are at least honest. They'd like to eliminate highway taxes because they force you to pay for a road you may never drive on. As an alternative, they suggest that if you and I want to get somewhere, we should build a road there and charge people tolls on it. Just try generalizing that. Such a society couldn't survive, and even if it could, it would be so full of terror and hate that any human being would prefer to live in hell.

I also learned from reading the left-wing press about the [Franklin] Roosevelt administration's indirect support for Francisco Franco, which was not well known, and still isn't.

There is a social responsibility to take care of vulnerable people. It seems that a sensible social responsibility is obligatory education, but also decent education, and that is not happening.

Some [people] may be "servants of the power structure," but that has to be shown. I think it often can be shown, but the burden of proof is on the critic who puts forth that thesis in particular cases.

Sectors of power are not going to favor the flourishing of dissidence.

People have no human rights, only the rights that they can gain on the labour market. Above all, wealth and power have to be protected.