“To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.”

“I’m 23 years old. I might just be my mother’s child, but in all reality, I’m everybody’s child. Nobody raised me; I was raised in this society.”

“I’m a reflection of the community.”

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

"The only time I really go on the Internet is for recipes."

"Election made me more aware, more conscious, more sensitive. Not just of sexism but of discrimination in all areas - class, gender, race. I had realized that there were problems ."

“England is governed not by logic but by parliament.”

“Every society is three meals away from chaos” 

“Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.” 

“The roots of modern religion are deeply embedded in the social oppression of the working masses.” 

“The ritual denunciation of the so-called ‘socialist’ states is replete with distortions and often outright lies.” 

“Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society.” 

But on the other hand, in discussion or debate concerning social issues or American foreign policy…. The issue is constantly raised, often with considerable venom. I’ve repeatedly been challenged on grounds of credentials, or asked, what special training do I have that entitles you to speak on these matters. The assumption is that people like me, who are outsiders from a professional viewpoint, are not entitled to speak on such things. 

“When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. In this horizon, a genuine sense of the common good also disappears. As these attitudes become more widespread, social norms are respected only to the extent that they do not clash with personal needs.” 

“We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” 

“Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” 

I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could.

But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I've been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants.

That was the first major social sciences conference at which social scientists from all cultures wanted to reach a consensus on whether we can continue to pursue a national course in the social sciences or whether we need a cosmopolitan path that also connects us in a new way.

“Change in society, social change, routinizes a key concept in sociology. Everyone knows what it means. Change brings a characteristic future of modernity into focus, namely permanent transformation, while basic concepts and the certainties that support them remain constant. Metamorphosis, by contrast, destabilizes these certainties of modern society. It shifts the focus to ‘being in the world’ and ‘seeing the world’, to events and processes which are unintended, which generally go unnoticed, which prevail beyond the domains of politics and democracy as side effects of radical technical and economic modernization. They trigger a fundamental shock, a sea change which explodes the anthropological constants of our previous existence and understanding of the world. Metamorphosis in this sense means simply that what was unthinkable yesterday is real and possible today.” 

In 1989, a lone and still-anonymous Chinese student stood unarmed in front of a Chinese tank and gave the world an enduring image of the determination of China's young to change their nation. He didn't text message the tank or share a video on YouTube.

When I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was so struck by the universality of small towns.

I was a young man working in Omaha, Nebraska, in the mid-1960s when I received a call, and I was summoned to Atlanta to work at WSB. It was, for me, the beginning of a real education about the South.

We can never completely fulfill the promise of this treasured republic if we are blinded by color.