“If they have real grievances redress them, if possible; or acknowledge the justice of them, and your inability to do it at the moment. If they have not, employ the force of government against them at once.”

As quoted in Michel Foucault (1991) by Didier Eribon, as translated by Betsy Wind, Harvard University Press, p. 282
Context: There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Justice (1993)

Source: The Scions of Shannara

The New York Times interview (2017)
Context: I was never that involved in the machine of press and publicity as an actor because I’ve always kind of worked on the margins of my profession … And then when my son was younger and it did get a little bit more intrusive, I tried to come to terms with how I was personally going to handle someone coming up to me on the street and wanting some part of my time. … Now what I do — because this is how I live — when someone approaches me and says, "Can I have your autograph," I say: "No, I’ve retired from that part of the business. I just act now." … I say: "What’s your name?" … I touch them. I look at them. I have a real exchange … I’m not an actor because I want my picture taken. I’m an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.

A Joy for Ever, note 6 (1857).
Context: For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)