The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights.

I like working-class people, generally speaking.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

The U.S.S.R. had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

The Bible is full of warnings about false prophets and false messiahs. These satanically inspired people have appeared in almost every generation of history.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

There are people who have money and people who are rich.

In the ’50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

The last time I visited Qaddafi was in May of 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his rather modest residence where he took me to show me how it had been left.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

Extremely religious, legalistic people have a criticism or judgment about everyone and everything. They just have a way of bringing people down with what they say.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

We live in a culture that relishes tearing others down. It’s ultimately more fulfilling, though, to help people reach their goals. Instead of feeling jealous, remember: If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

It’s amazing, the culture Coach Belichick has been able to create in our system.

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.