“Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries.”

Use your art to fight.

The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.

Fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was. My whole effort is to remove that distinction. The writer is the midwife of understanding. It’s very important for me to tell politics like a story, to make it real.

The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.

Violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony.

People who promote the free market and growth are far more romantic, and far more ideologically driven and blinded by their vision than somebody who goes in and comments about the beauty of a forest or the stars in the sky.

Flags are bits of colored cloth used first to shrinkwrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened.

The world’s ‘freeest’ country has the highest number in prison.

Whatever else their faults may be, they were not radical Islamist states – Iraq was not, Syria is not, Libya was not. The most radical fundamentalist Islamist state is, of course, your America’s Saudi Arabia.

Sometimes there’s truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.

The revolution cannot be funded. It’s not the imagination of trusts and foundations that’s going to bring real change.

I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don’t know.

We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.

NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they are supposed to maintain the status quo. They are the missionaries of the corporate world.

Excitement always leads to tears.

I’ve been to the Vatican more than anyplace else outside this country in the world. I am mesmerized by it.

Australian schools have cool uniforms. I wish I had to wear a woven straw hat for maths.

The more intermediaries there are, the more problems there are.

Japan will finally open a new page for lunar exploration and space development.

The growing economic potential of India and Russia is mutually complementary in many respects.

I’ll be proud to say my country is committed to preventing violence against women.

We can take this country back. All we need is to nominate the right candidate. It’s no more complicated than that.

You deserve a president who will get up every single day and work to make your life better.