I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors [...] I don't usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this 'hopey changey' stuff, she was right, there was nothing there. And it was understood by the people who run the political system, and so it's no great secret that the US electoral system is mainly a public relations extravaganza...it's sort of a marketing affair.

المثقف من حمل الحقيقة في وجه القوة ('cultured from carrying the truth in the face of power')

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines that everybody else is saying,... [o]r else you say something which in fact is true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself.

The truth is, I have absolutely no professional credentials - literally, which is why I'm teaching at MIT.