Your belief system saturates the space around you.
The military wants a system that protects its policies and privileges.
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.
We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems.
America's grossly unfair tax system won't lead to class war. Or, if it does, the war will be brief.
Global war is a clash of systems, not just battalions biffing one another in some godforsaken forest.
Republicans have succeeded with a social agenda that gets people to vote against their own interests while the Democrats are so elitist that they can't tap into the anger that's real.
if admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lackey of poverty, the love of gain would cease to be an universal problem.
Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessl...
Impartial, compassionate, brave, and understanding…these are the traits that come with putting the Noble Eightfold Path into practice. By following this path, anyone can become the kind of leader the Buddha hoped to see—a leader of peace.
When L.A.’s schizophrenia between Dreamland and Utopia was becoming socially manifest, the United States, which was always a place, went to war with America, which was always an idea.
They thought man was a creature of rapacious self-interest, and yet they wanted him to be free- free, in essence, to contend, to engage in an umpired strife, to use property to get property.
But his political sense kept up a persistent itch that said: A, Given ignorance in the mix, stupidity was at least as common in politics as astute maneuvering; B, Crisis always drew insects; and, C, Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had...
One by one, these disciples would infect the nations with grace. It wasn't a call to take the sword or the throne and force the world to bow. Rather, they were to live the contagious love of God, to woo the nations into a new future.
Rules do not determine outcomes - the players still have to make choices - but they make some outcomes more likely than others, by defining what it means to "win", and by creating incentives for and imposing constraints on the players.
Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking.
Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.
Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all. No judgment implied. Just an observation.
And, corny as it may sound, I do cherish the bond between me and the audience, the minority that follows my stuff and always makes me glad it's us against the world.
Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake--you know, to send the right message to kids.
At the heart of my argument is the view that religious faith, far from being inevitably on the side of the status quo, should on principle hold this world to higher standards.
