The most interesting - in fact, inspiring - people I met there [Porto Alegre] are those who remain nameless: representatives of the international campesino movement, the East Timorese delegation,... - the usual heroes, who disappear, unknown, apart from the consequences of their work.

Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself.

For the last couple of hundred years, there have been struggles about this. Even the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the constitution talk about personal rights.

If by 'intellectual' you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts and forming ideas for people in power, and telling people what they should believe...they're really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task it is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population SHOULD be anti-intellectual in that repect.

I know some really outstanding Turkish journalists, and have been pleased and honored to be able to join with them a few times in their courageous protests against state terror and repression.

Very commonly substances are criminalized because they're associated with what's called the dangerous classes, you know, poor people, or working people.... Actually, the peak of marijuana use was as I said, in the seventies, but that was rich kids, so you don't throw them in jail. And then it got seriously criminalized, you know, you really throw people in jail for it, when it was poor people.

[Francisco Franco] said they should resort to guerrilla war. Which has a history in Spain.