
“But you can't read history at an illiterate stage / And you can't raise a family on minimum wage”
Harlem Streets
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)
Source: Abdelmadjid Tebboune (2021) cited in: " "You Can’t Question a People’s History and You Can’t Insult the Algerians" https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/algerian-president-abdelmadjid-tebboune-you-can-t-question-a-people-s-history-and-you-can-t-insult-the-algerians-a-44033dcb-53b4-4660-8e24-44aff8756c2e" in SPIEGEL International, 9 November 2021.
“But you can't read history at an illiterate stage / And you can't raise a family on minimum wage”
Harlem Streets
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)
“You can't trust machines. You can't trust people.”
By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
Source: Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom (2008); also on "The Way I See It" Starbucks Coffee Cup #284
“When you can't be honest with people, you can't ever relax with them.”
Source: My Best Friend's Girl
On the Bosnian war Time Magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981548-1,00.html
2000s
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times (2002) documentary film
Quotes 2000s, 2002
Context: If you take a poll among U. S. intellectuals, support for bombing Afghanistan is just overwhelming, but how many of them think that you should bomb Washington because of the U. S. war against Nicaragua, let's say, or Cuba or Turkey, or anyone else? Now if anyone were to suggest this, they'd be considered insane, but why? I mean, if one is right, why is the other wrong? When you try to get someone to talk about this question, they just won't try. They can't comprehend what your question is, because you can't comprehend that we should apply to ourselves the standards that you apply to others. That is incomprehensible! There couldn't be a moral principle more elementary... There's a famous definition in the Gospels of the hypocrite. The hypocrite is the person who refuses to apply to himself the standards that he applies to others. By that standard, the entire commentary and discussion of the so-called "war on terror" is pure hypocrisy, virtually without exception. Can anybody understand that? No, can't understand that. But that's not so unusual... I know it was true in Germany and France and everywhere else. It's just standard. It's ugly, but it's standard.
“You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.”
Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013)
“You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.”
After All (1936), p. 224