“Ridicule is about the most powerful weapon possible.”

But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.

In a free society, a large degree of human activity is none of the government’s business. We should make criminal what’s going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.

It is because the fight against the harshest aspects of unrestricted capitalism is therefore a political problem and not an intellectual one that community action remains so essential.

And unless you think there is a serious chance you’re going to jail, don’t listen to your lawyer.

When I was here there was still a requirement that students had to swim 50 yards to graduate…because Harry Elkins Widener had drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. And it made me very grateful at the time that he had not gone down in a plane crash.

Martin Luther King said, and it is sadly still true, that one of the most segregated times in America is the hour of worship.

Ronald Reagan believes in the free market like some people believe in unicorns.

For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.

It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party, People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.

Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn’t have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.

I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.

Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can’t do anything because they’re tied up in knots.

Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.

The fact that theyre a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that its National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.

I should have voted for the first Iraq war. George Bush did that one very well. I had been skeptical. I was afraid that George Bush was going to treat the first Iraq war the way his son treated the second.

Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.

We would get rid of assault weapons. There would not be an assault weapon in the United States, whether it’s for a show or someone having it in a collection.

Anyone who’s not military knows this fact. Why do you use chemical weapons while you’re advancing ?

In Aleppo we had the missile itself, and the material, and the sample from the sand, from the soil, and samples from the blood [of chemical weapons].

The United States accused Syria, and because you accused you have to bring evidence [of chemical weapons], this first of all. We have to find evidences when we are there.

This is where we can discuss the evidence [of the chemical weapons ], but he doesn’t have it. He didn’t present it because he doesn’t have it, Kerry doesn’t have it. No one in your administration has it. If they had it, they would have presented it to you as media from the first day.

At the end, I said [chemical weapons] is something not to be discussed with anyone.

We’re not sure that if there’s chemical weapon used and who used it. We can’t talk about virtual things, we have to talk about facts.

We don’t discuss this issue [ chemical weapons ] in public because we never said that we have it, and we never said that we don’t have it. It’s a Syrian issue ; it’s a military issue we never discuss in public with anyone.