“Let us not be afraid to express the passionate concern everyone of us feels about present housing conditions. … This is a problem which brooks no escape, no evasion. It is no use talking about a free market: the provision of decent housing for all is a clear and inescapable obligation of government.”

“Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.”

“Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.”

“Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means — what it bestows on us — the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.”

“Listen to how everyone is talking about you. You have to use it as fuel for motivation.”

“One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.”

“But the First Amendment protects against the Government; it does not leave us at the mercy of noblesse oblige. We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly. […] The Government’s assurance that it will apply [a statutory provision] more restrictively than its language provides is pertinent only as an implicit acknowledgment of the potential constitutional problems with a more natural reading.”

“Passion is something which very few of us have really felt. What we may have felt is enthusiasm, which is being caught up in an emotional state over something. Our passion is for something: for music, for painting, for literature, for a country, for a woman or a man; it is always the effect of a cause. When you fall in love with someone, you are in a great state of emotion, which is the effect of that particular cause; and what I am talking about is passion without a cause. It is to be passionate about everything, not just about something, whereas most of us are passionate about a particular person or thing. I think one must see this distinction very clearly. In the state of passion without a cause, there is intensity free of all attachment; but when passion has a cause, there is attachment, and attachment is the beginning of sorrow.”

“[After the stock-markets crash] the number one priority will be the provision of adequate food for all the people; two, the provision of adequate housing for all the people; thirdly, the provision of adequate healthcare and education for all the people. These are the basic human rights needed everywhere by all people, yet there is no country in the world in which all of these pertain as a universal right. When the economic collapse occurs, humanity will begin to recognize its oneness, and the need to co-operate and share the world’s resources.Maitreya will present the nations with an alternative way of living, of conducting economic and political affairs... The new government which will emerge after the stock market crash will reflect the will of the people and stand for the people.”

“Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.”