“The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.”

It’s not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it’s the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.

I don’t regret setting bombs.

[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.

I would say for the young: Don’t be straight jacketed by ideology. Don’t be driven by a structure of ideas.

So that’s kind of amazing. But he was offered a cabinet post by Eisenhower in his second term. So he was moderate Republican. But if you asked him, he would’ve said, “I don’t have any politics. I’m a business person.” Mainstream, the American view, as he understood it.

I don’t think saying “I was wrong here, I was wrong there” absolves you of anything particularly, nor does it get you into heaven.

I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.

If you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything.

“We all hated the war in Vietnam.” Well, it was easy to hate the war in Vietnam 40 years on.

The only people who have never had a problem with me speaking in their venues are independent bookstores and libraries. Universities and humanities councils have canceled me, but never an independent bookstore.

When I was arrested opposing the war in Vietnam in 1965, as I said about 20 or 30% of people were opposed to the war. By 1968, more than half of Americans were opposed to the war.

I wish I had been wiser. I wish I had been more effective, I wish I’d been more unifying, I wish I’d been more principled.

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.

Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.

It was the Democratic Party, it was the Presidential election. We elected a president [Barack Obama]; we didn’t elect a king. So all the speculation in the next three months.

Part of the fun of writing, touring, teaching, is engaging with real people about all of it: what to do now, how to build a movement, of approaches to teaching, of parenting – it’s exciting to be in that dialogue.

I wasn’t a silver-spoon kid on the golf course growing up.

He signed as a shortstop. He could play the outfield, of course, and third base and first, too. He was a tremendous athlete. Mickey Mantle was unbelievable, too.

And that we can deflect words by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.

When she gets to know him, she sees qualities in him that she recognizes and it’s almost like trying to remake the past, but of course, it doesn’t work.

Frankly I have much more faith in what they posted than what they say during the course of an interview.

I would just encourage any artist to stay focused, of course keep God first, and just keep working hard. Try to outwork those who you idolize.

Of course you want more revenue, but what good is it if it isn’t predictable?

Of course, I’m not allowed to talk about the script, but I can say it is a really good story.