“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.”

To the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.

Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people.

The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it’s very limited in what it can do logically. It’s an existential experience – there and then gone.

We have to face the unpleasant as well as the affirmative side of the human story, including our own story as a nation, our own stories of our peoples.

News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.

An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias.

Witness the coupling of news and entertainment. See everyday people cast overboard as the pirates and predators of Wall Street seized the ship of state. I didn’t drift; I moved left just by standing still.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality.

The Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing sustaining and powerful movement whose interest is to prove that religion has a healing side as well as a killing side, and that democracy is the consequence of conscience

The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories in Rupert Murdoch’s empire and rightwing talk radio, and corporate media have their back.

Although I was brought up in a culturally and religious conservative culture, as a Baptist I was taught that no one has the right to subpoena your conscience.

You do it because there’s a story to be told. I can tell you that the job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is about as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place.

We seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion. Reality is fearsome .. but experience tells us that more fearsome yet is evading it.

When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together.

Rockefeller was born to it, and he has made the most of it. But what some critics see as a vast international conspiracy, he considers a circumstance of life and just another day’s work… In the world of David Rockefeller it’s hard to tell where business ends and politics begins

I really believe that coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

Approach or come: refers not to the physical act of coming, but to the mental attitude; the heart is mentioned for sincerity. When they sincerely promise not to fight against you, do not pursue them.

Sawyer was always the Vincent boy worth fighting for. He’s the special one.

Things worth having don’t come easy,” Woods said. “You have to fight for it until you’re tired of fighting, and then you take a breather and fight some more.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t give up. You’ll regret it.

What I would say to the young men and women who are beset by hopelessness and doubt is that they should go and see what is being done on the ground to fight poverty.

I think we are constantly faced with the same decision. The decision to be blindly obedient to authority versus the decision to try and change things by fighting the powers that be is always, throughout history, the only decision.

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

I love the fight game. I like the brutality. I like the mentality. I like the aggressiveness, but I like the technique and skill. I like the stakes. I like the people around in the gym. I like the everyday, working class feel of a boxing gym.

I grew up doing martial arts, and I love martial arts movies and fight scenes. I’m pretty athletic, so I enjoy doing that stuff.