“The passions and commitments that ignited my activity as a student are the same passions and commitments that I have today.”

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.

If you listen to the debate, [Barack Obama] and [John] McCain said the same thing about gay rights.

I proposed a law that every country where the U.S. has a military base – those people should be allowed to vote in the American election.

Something about the fact that an African American had, given the long sad history of our country, now become President – that was exhilarating.

Well, first of all I think that we have to be careful with terms like the working class, obviously. When [Karl] Marx wrote about the working class he was writing about something much more bounded than we’re talking about.

When you go into a college of education you’ve got aspirations of making a difference in people’s lives, of loving children, of working with kids, but none of that is affirmed in your college of education.

I said something idiotic like, as [William] Shakespeare says, “Action is eloquence,” and the judge just frowned at me and gave me a couple weeks in jail.

Everyone who knew [Barack] Obama from being in Hyde Park knew he was the smartest guy in any room he walked into; a decent, compassionate, lovely person; pragmatic, middle-of-the-road and ambitious.

I always say your body is the temple of your spirit, why not decorate it? My kids say, no, no, your body is the temple of your spirit, keep it clean. I’m covered in tattoos and I get a tattoo every time I write a book. I get the tattoo from the book.

The idea that teaching is somehow the delivery of the goods is such a misunderstanding of what actually goes on.

One-hundred facts about Vietnam and we studied the fact sheet and got in to these arguments and it was fantastic, and I remember one moment when we heard two students saying don’t talk to those guys, meaning my brother and me.

I have an addiction to caffeine.

This 1965. We went to trial on our city. We were obviously borrowing tactics and strategy from the Black freedom movement, and we were echoing their approach to things.

Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.