The intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in society that cannot be reduced simply to . . a faceless professional.

They are involve in producing products and there are different kinds of people running them, but the principle is the same. A corporation shouldn't have the right. Under American law as its developed over the past century, corporation do have personal rights, but I think that's a very negative development.

I had no expectations about Barack Obama and I'm not in the least disillusioned.

Independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new direction. There are plenty of people like that, but schools tend to discourage those characteristics.

The reason academic disputes are so vicious is that so little is at stake.

The crime of liberation theology was that it takes the Gospels seriously. That's unacceptable. The Gospels are radical pacifist material, if you take a look at them . . . Liberation theology, in Brazil particularly, brought the actual Gospel to peasants. They said, let's read what the Gospels say, and try to act on the principles they describe. That was the major crime that set off the Reagan wars of terror.

A captured pirate was brought before Alexander the Great. “How dare you molest the sea?” asked Alexander. “How dare you molest the whole world?” the pirate replied, and continued: “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor.