“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.”

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.

I suffer from a genetic flaw, which is that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.

What were the politics of my family? They were mainstream moderate politics.

Now you may like the images of long-haired hippies running in the streets throwing tear gas canisters, but we didn’t end the war. And that’s what we set out to do. What was not ended by the anti-war movement was ended by the Vietnamese. That’s our shame.

It’s amazing where the paranoid mind can take you.

That’s in the nature of social change. So you can analyze what didn’t work, but it’s very hard to predict what will work.

I mean, what’s he doing now? He’s evolving. Evolving? Well, evolve for Christ’s sake! And this is a guy – the whole gay community, and the whole environmental community and all these other people said, he’s our guy.

The end of Students for a Democratic Society is viewed by me and a lot of other people as a terrible sorry in many ways, tragic event even though I participated in it and played some role in it. But I regret a lot of that.

[Students for a Democratic Society] was on many campuses and it was a powerful organization. It was founded by Tom Hayden, who passed away very recently.

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

So we were ecstatic and we swirled around spontaneously, the campus in Ann Harbor and about 4,000 of us landed on the steps of the president of the University of Michigan’s home.

One of the things that’s complicated about writing anything is that it’s an act of narcissism, and then of course once it sails out into the world, you have to let go of it.

Nixon probably was a nice guy.

[Barack] Obama doesn’t disappoint me, because all during the campaign he said, I’m a pragmatic, middle-of-the-road, compromising politician.

I lasted a year and a half at Michigan before I dropped out and joined the merchant marines and I was a merchant marine for my sophomore year then I came back to Michigan.

I spoke at the University of Georgia, and a whole contingent of Tea Party people in Hell’s Angels regalia came in and sat in the front and scowled at me while I gave my talk.

It is impossible for a man to be made happy by putting him in a happy place, unless he be first in a happy state.

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.

I didn’t feel comfortable at first with pure mathematics, or as a professor of pure mathematics. I wanted to do a little bit of everything and explore the world.

The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all.

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

I don’t feel that because I’m First Lady, I’m very different from what I was before. It can happen to anyone. After all, it has happened to anyone.

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it….

I had thought I would hate being First Lady… I loved it.