“There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.”

The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money.

I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it’s hardly a traditional political party anymore.

There’s never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it’s mostly a fabrication.

The European Central Bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.

It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and received a verdict – which, of course, the U.S. dismissed with contempt.

I don’t think that experience is a very useful or convincing attribute for a sensible foreign policy. Henry Kissinger had a lot of experience.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

NATO was constructed on the – with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault.

The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.

It’s a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can’t get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

To find out that there is even one devoted fan who loves you, as a singer, without any condition, gives you tremendous amount of strength and courage.

My wife bought me a vintage Gibson guitar that isn’t just beautiful but has tremendous sentimental value. I have plenty of guitars for live gigs but this is one to treasure.

You’ll be laying there fantasizing about sleeping on a futon. There’s no risk when you go after a dream. There’s a tremendous amount to risk to playing it safe.

I don’t like a tremendous amount of conflict. I don’t think that fighting and passion are the same thing.

Daniel Ellsberg showed tremendous courage back in the 70s.

Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.

I always knew that I was tremendously creative. I recited love poems, I wrote stories and I got excellent grades in every subject, except for maths.

Make the short story tremendously succinct – with a very short pulse or rhythm – and the closest selection of detail.