Obamacare has made the government part of our health care decisions. The IRS controls all of our financial information. The NSA apparently sees everything else.
Every dollar I can't commit to my company that's paid in taxes is paying a government that I believe is too big and doing way too much that I don't want done.
Also, when you escape a Communist regime, you treasure liberty and you understand that as government and state expand, liberty must contract.
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.
Fear is like a black cavern that is terrifying. Once you enter the cavern and explore it, you realize that you can get out of it, go through it and get out of it.
As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.
It seems to me we have been in a rhetorical arms race in this country, with each side unwilling to lay down its weapons for fear - usually justified - the other side would beat them to a pulp.
Absolute faith can blind you to the consequences of the actions you allow. It can tell you it's okay to drop bombs on another country, or that it's okay to hate a group of people such as homosexuals.
Testimony is an integral part of the Black religious tradition. It is the occasion where the believer stands before the community of faith in order to give account of the hope that is in him or her.
Measured by any standard, white or black, Washington must be regarded today as one of the great men of this country: and in the future he will be so honored.
I'm half Jewish, I'm half black, I look in-between. I dress funny. I play all these different styles of music on one record. It's like, What is he doing?
I do believe that Israel is covenant land. That's very controversial, but I read the Bible literally, and I believe that God gave them that land, all the way back to Deuteronomy.
There had always been black people in and out of our house, and from the outset I had been taught that for them life was defined by struggle and filled with injustice.
And I used to say, 'I'm black, too.' In other words, I - my whole life I've been called a half-breed, a convict, king of the trailer trash, this and that. I take that and stand.
Unbeknownst to most American investors, significant portions of their public pension, mutual fund, life insurance and private portfolios are comprised of stocks of privately held companies that partner with state sponsors of terror.
Life is about choices. Some we regret, some were proud of. Some will haunt us forever. 'Black Rain' was very much about choices. The message - we are what we chose to be.
On the one hand, there is no reason that a black person needs to live a portion of his or her life being concerned about the people of color around him. On the other hand, if you don't you're crazy.
When I started 'This American Life', one of the reactions I got was, 'When is the adult going to show up who will host the show?' At some point, people just got used to it.
I feel like in an interview situation, it's a kind of intimacy that I can understand and handle - versus in real life, when I'm much more of a bumbler and have a hard time.
I have never been afraid to go a bit out there with what I am wearing on film. I tend to be a bit more conservative in real life, with mountains of black in my closet.
