“The process of shaping opinion, attitudes, and perceptions was termed the ‘engineering of consent’ by one of the founders of the modern public relations industry, Edward Bernays.”

It matters little, at this point, where the exact truth lies in the maze of perjury, evasion, and of contempt for the normal – hardly inspiring – standards of political conduct.

No matter what engineering field you’re in, you learn the same basic science and mathematics. And then maybe you learn a little bit about how to apply it.

Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual.

The truth is, I have absolutely no professional credentials – literally, which is why I’m teaching at MIT.

Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.

In the US, there is basically one party – the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West.

Nicaragua dealt with the problem of terrorism in exactly the right way.

While the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided.

NATO’s essentially run by the United States.

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 U.S. – the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that’s hardly even a joke.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way.

Whether one welcomes or deplores it, nothing is more surely and exactly characteristic of modern times than the irresistible invasion of the human world by technology. Mechanism invading like a tide all the places of the earth and all forms of social activity.

You are born modern, you do not become so.

I don’t really have a writing process. I don’t write at all but, honestly, I feel like it’s a modern-day writing because everything is technology and if I go in there and freestyle and I keep it.

I love art, I collect mostly modern art.

People like me make modern life intolerable.

And we have never observed modern finance-capitalist systems operating over a sustained period at this kind of credit-to-GDP leverage ratio.

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.

The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind.