“For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”

You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

But I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility.

Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt.

John Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan administration, but he’s regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship.

If workers are more insecure, that’s very ‘healthy’ for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health.

In the academic world, most of the work that is done is clerical. A lot of the work done by professors is routine.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

There’s a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn’t count the votes right, and so on.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

A tremendous amount of the entrepreneurial initiative, if you want to call it that, comes from the dynamic state sector on which most of the economy relies to socialize costs and risks and privatize eventual profit. And that’s achieved by, if you like, advertising.

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?

Although commenting on issues of current importance was more common.

it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.

By bringing current events into the classroom, everyday discussion, and social media.

Maybe we don’t need to wait for our grandchildren’s questions to remind us we should have paid more attention to current events.

It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.

I thought writing about somebody current would be a little closer to what I’m used to doing.

I thought that, with so much current attention focused on the topic of North Korea, I might share what I think are three books which cast a rare light on the elusive realm of North Korea.

Kaczynski appointed a judge to the position of deputy justice minister who had once sentenced current President Bronislaw Komorowski to a prison term.