“A people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.”

I don’t know why you’d go to a comedian and say, “You know what? You have a large menu of items, but this one thing I did not like and therefore, you should be shut down. You should cease to make a living and you should be thrown out in the streets.”

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.

Slow down, especially at the beginning of a speech. You’ll get the audience’s attention by pausing.

Democracy doesn’t begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls ‘The Patriot’s Dream.

We’re playing our instruments probably more so than most people that I see play their instruments.

Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.

When you put a camera in front of me, I’m home.

America is the longest argument in the world.

It’s no longer just reporting the headlines of the day, but trying to put the headlines into some context and to add some perspective into what they mean.

Democracy works when people claim it as their own

We have got to have the ugly facts in order to protect us from the official view of reality. Otherwise, we are squeezed empty and filled with what other people want us to think and feel and experience.

You know what’s the rage this year? …Hats.

There’s 1,000 ways into addiction 1,000 ways out.

David Rockefeller is the most conspicuous representative today of the ruling class, a multinational fraternity of men who shape the global economy and manage the flow of its capital.

The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they’ve won.

Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.

Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable.

I wish I had spent more time at the office and less time in prison.

I couldn’t think of anything less appealing than molding the minds of tomorrow’s leaders.

Compared to the American public at large, probably a slightly higher percentage of journalists, because of thier enhanced power of discernment, realize they know a gay person or two, and are, therefore, less frightened of them.

Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist.

I don’t have a negative bone in my body. That’s why I could care less about any gossip. It doesn’t interest me. I’d rather sit down and write a song.

Reached only by boat, seaplane and, with less surety, telephone-this is Fire Island.

I realized that he was writing about good people doing good things. This did not match my experience of life and so I found my sentences stretching and becoming less plain.