A lot of association on the internet is highly constructive. There are people interacting, interchanging ideas, making plans, coordinating activities; take any of the popular movements, a lot of the organization is through the internet. We want to have a demonstration or we want to have a meeting, its done through the internet. I think that's all to the good.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

History records endless struggles to enlarge those realms, inspiring ones; it also records painful reversals and setbacks.

Physics and those parts of other fields that grow out of physics - chemistry, the structure of big molecules - in those domains, there is a lot of progress. In many other domains, there is very little progress in developing real scientific understanding.

It was reported in the left-wing press in the late 1930s that the Texas Company (Texaco), headed by the Nazi sympathizer Torkild Rieber, diverted its oil shipments from the Republic, with which it had contracts, to [Francisco] Franco.

States are violent institutions. The government of any country, including ours, represents some sort of domestic power structure, and it's usually violent. States are violent to the extent that they're powerful, that's roughly accurate.

Technology is basically neutral. It's kind of like a hammer. The hammer doesn't care whether you use it to build a house, or whether a torturer uses it to crush somebody's skull.