I don't encourage socialists or anarchists to accept falsehoods, in particular, to see revolutionary potential where there is none.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination,' we might say - exercised through the mass media.

For the past century or so that's [ Monroe Doctrine] actually been true, but it's declining very significantly.

Many of the people who voted for Trump were people who voted for Obama eight years ago. You remember, of course, his message was "hope and change." People wanted change, for good reasons, and they wanted hope. Disillusioned with what took place, they turned to someone else who was offering hope and change. When they're disillusioned with that, it depends on what activists and others do.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.

We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid.

[Moral responsibilities] has nothing particular to do with academia, except insofar as those within it tend to be unusually privileged in the respects just mentioned.