There is no such thing as an impartial jury because there are no impartial people. There are people that argue on the web for hours about who their favorite character on “Friends” is. —Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show

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There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it. —Roland Barthes, French critic

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Be fair with others, but then keep after them until they’re fair with you. —Alan Alda, Actor

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Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in. —Alan Alda, Actor

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All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate. —Walter Benjamin, German critic

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It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed. —Walter Benjamin, German critic

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The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception. —Walter Benjamin, German critic

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For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed? —bell hooks, black feminist social critic

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I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison. —bell hooks, black feminist social critic

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I feel enormously blessed to be a successful black woman writer in this culture, but I have found my small fame, such as it is, to be very isolating… because I think that especially for black women, the more we rise from the bottom, the more we move and journey, the more we are the targets of the most brutal and vicious attacks. —bell hooks, black feminist social critic

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I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that’s becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism. —bell hooks, black feminist social critic

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I’m so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer. —bell hooks, black feminist social critic

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