When you're younger, you see the people who are in power and think they must have that position because of some degree of skill. And as you get older, you realize it's not true, that most people in those positions are absolutely inept. And this naturally makes you feel better about yourself.
One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.
The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed.
We are in an era of chronic insecurity and growing inequalities. In that context, we need to have new mechanisms for income distribution which give people a sense of security.
One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank they don't like to think of themselves as poor.
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
Our experience at Teach For America has been that the more people understand educational inequity, the more they want to do something about it.
Most people who are selling their mineral rights, this is a once-in-a-lifetime transaction. The people who are buying, the landmen who are coming in, do it every day. So there's a little inequity there about knowledge.
I am very sad for men and women trapped in any relationship where there is cruelty, dominance, inequity. I long for the liberation of all people.
Leaders must wake people out of inertia. They must get people excited about something they've never seen before, something that does not yet exist.
The next great technology revolution might be around the corner, but it won't automatically improve most people's lives. That will depend on politics, which is indeed ugly but also inescapable.
When you meet people who are spending 70, 80 percent of their income on rent, eviction becomes much more of an inevitability than the result of personal irresponsibility.
Most poor families are living completely unassisted in a private rental market, devoting most of their income to housing. When you meet people who are spending 70, 80 percent of their income on rent, eviction becomes much more of an inevitability than the result of personal irresponsibility.
People read inevitability as entitlement, and the American people want their candidates to sweat for the job. They want them to actually make a case for the job.
'Looking' was always a niche show for a niche within a niche. It's a gay-themed show, so you're not going to get millions of straight people watching it - that's the inevitability of it.
In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.
Outsourcing is inevitable, and I don't think it's necessarily treating people like things.
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset.
There's nothing to be said for being famous. It's a pain. You can't be rude to people - it's inexcusable not to be nice. Anyway, it's not in my nature. I was trained to be nice.
