“When [my dad] was at the University of Michigan, my mom was a social-worker. As he rose, he voted for [Adlai] Stevenson initially. Then he voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower. Then he kept voting Republican until he voted for Barack Obama.”

The audience is like my instrument. It’s not just me up there, it’s collaborative.

I’m very interested in people who are in a situation that needs a little puzzling out. The thing that gets me started on a story is a person in a tough situation.

The way it happened was that we were advocating for a strike that we advocated that the faculty should strike in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle.

If you’re going to help somebody, sneak in, sneak out, do what you can. I just sneak along and do my thing and meet wonderful people, some people I’ve never met, new friends.

Even there, [Barack] Obama’s generals, his Pentagon, they’re telling him what to do. And the force for gay rights is inevitable. And you can say Obama will help us, and maybe he will, but only if we have something on the ground that will make him help us.

Let’s enjoy this world. Let’s enjoy one another. We are meant to love one another, not to hate one another.

Moreover, his ferocious slide playing motivated Clapton to turn in some of the finest guitar performances of his career

Nothing fruitful ever comes when plants are forced to flower in the wrong season.

Teaching has always been, for me, linked to issues of social justice. I’ve never considered it a neutral or passive profession.

… Geniuses have a little extra something. There’s that little something that you know is a little different.

I know that’s a little jarring, coming from a Weatherman, but what I mean by being humble is doubting if your action did anything. So you have to open your eyes, act and doubt. And then you have to repeat for a lifetime.

Now teach-ins are fairly common or they become common place. But in 1965, the Students for Democratic Society in Ann Harbor organized the first teach-in.

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.

They’ve just memorized that stupid fact sheet. And we thought, gosh do we sound that good? It didn’t seem possible. But that was my introduction to politics.

I wish I knew as much about anything today as I knew about everything when I was twenty.