"Maybe not a hydra because that’s really, really nasty. I think there was almost a false head: we ripped open the packaging and now we’re faced with the real thing that’s there in the box…"

"…In Egypt, in the decade of slow, simmering discontent before the revolution, novelists produced texts of critique, of dystopia, of nightmare. Now, we all seem to have given up – for the moment – on fiction."

"…A work of fiction lives by empathy – the extending of my self into another's, the willingness to imagine myself in someone else's shoes. This itself is a political act: empathy is at the heart of much revolutionary action…"

"…Most people are content to live their lives within prescribed and personal boundaries. But one of the points of artists surely is that they live outside their skin. That they're connected. That they hurt with the hurt of their fellow humans. How, then, can they disengage? How can you – if your task, if your gift, is narrative – absent yourself from the great narrative of the world?..."

"Only "America," of all national designations, took on the combined force of eschatology and chauvinism. Many forms of nationalism have laid claims to a world-redeeming promise; many Christian sects have sought, in open or secret heresy, to find the sacred in the profane; many European Protestants have linked the soul’s journey and the way to wealth. But only the "American Way," of all modern symbologies, has managed to circumvent the contradictions inherent in these approaches. Of all symbols of identity, only "American" has succeeded in uniting nationality with universality, civic and spiritual selfhood, sacred and secular history, the country’s past and the paradise to be, in a single transcendent ideal."

"Star Wars is Chinese Taoism. -- Star Wars is Taoism in American garb (2015), China Daily, Beijing"

"Division turned out to be humanity's strength, togetherness its arms. -- Reassure HK, remind Britain SAR no longer a British 'colony' (2019), China Daily, Beijing"

"The West is the ultimate status upgrade to them [the Chinese]. -- The perils of being associated with China (2014), The Korea Times, Seoul"

"Ape Caesar is a universal leader, regardless of origin; he is willing to lead his species and shape the world, and subjugate it, if need be. He points to the future. Sun Wukong guards his people and their traditions. He looks back at their glorious past. --Films vis-a-vis nations' global role (2014), China Daily, Hong Kong"

"Honesty and facts are almost irrelevant. Getting attention is key, causing offence is desirable, and provoking a physical response is the jackpot."

"A Greek invention, democracy is highly overrated. For starters, it never worked in Greece. The first philosophers were fascists and, even today, 2,500 years later, the 'cradle of Western civilization' remains an incompetent state. Roman emperors and a vengeful, authoritarian God are the true European success stories."

"The English language is often hailed as the "international language", but it is not the global language. In fact, the global language will have to adopt tens of thousands of non-European terminologies."

"We must begin to find the untranslatables in each culture and return them to world history."

"The US, Germany, France and Britain were never real democracies. Far from it, the US is a plutocracy with a post-monarchal king's court (the White House) and a holy scripture (the constitution). The three others are tedious class societies."

"Harvard has de facto become a Chinese outpost. -- Oh, boy, do the Chinese love Harvard! (2014), China Daily, Beijing"

"Just like in Europe in the feudal days, the typical Chinese public servant today drags himself around with little or no money, and thus stays close to his master. In the past, that was the emperor, now it is the party. Can China's new government end corruption? (2013), The Japan Times, Tokyo"

"Capitalism forces nations to compete for market shares, natural resources, and human capital. Less obvious so, they also compete for names, brands, and terminologies."

"Yes, I am vulgar and fearless, and loudly indifferent to convention and limitation."

"Chinese holiday names are not dead yet, although I would hardly call them alive either: they are truly undead vocabularies."

"Sadly, a biblical sense of mission perverts all Western societies. There isn't a town square in Europe without a church. Priests are trained in national universities. The ruling party of Germany is the Christian Democratic Union. America is God's favorite nation. And we all live in the year 2019 of our Lord, Jesus Christ. -- Chinese are not so foolish as to worship at the church of Western values (2015), South China Morning Post, Hong Kong"

"Where can I find a Holy Man?"

"The vocabularies in the world add up, they do not overlap. Translation is something else."

"The time is ripe for Chinese thought as a global quest for cultural pluralism."

"The shengren is above philosophy and beyond religion. He is decisively not European. This will be read in a thousand years."

"Not a single Buddha, bodhisattva, or shengren in Europe, but in Asia: all philosophers and saints? What is that probability?"

"The shengren is the single most important concept in Chinese history."

"Few people realize that the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages."

"China is not only a sage culture, but a living sage culture."

"Any sage can do philosophy, but not every philosopher is a sage."

"Calling Confucius a philosopher is the wrong classification. Like calling a whale a fish."

"Western nations act as if they 'own' the globe, history, and all material objects."

"As a rule, for any society that is single-mindedly interested in its own promotion and thus survival, it would have to have a h uge population and it would have to send its people out, not letting too many others in."

"There is nothing paradox about Confucius. He is a shengren."

"Every culture is unique, none is universal."

"The Chinese dragon 'long' is essentially a force of the good."

"Hey, China, You look like one of us. Look what we've made you!"

"Of all the cultures that have disappeared from the world, not a single farewell letter or suicide note has been unearthed."

"The cognitive preeminence of East-Asians in several intellectual and artistic disciplines is fascinating and terrifying to look at."

"Asia is the unifying one, while the West is the destructive other."

"The East is more inductive, while the West is more deductive."

"The smallest leaves and twigs will bend and break... If our criteria was 'longevity', however, we would be safest to bet on the two great branches of World History, the East and the West."

"The cultural and economic penalty for not recognizing East-Asian talent is immense."

"Let us build the fairest construction the world has ever seen - the global language."

"Communism and capitalism were made for scale and the masses, and scale and the masses are now in Asia."

"Revive Asian words and promote important key concepts!"

"Today freedom also means the freedom to hate, it means the freedom to say anything, it means the freedom to disparage people, to dehumanize people, to believe in the culture of cruelty, to believe that kindness is not a virtue but a liability. Freedom has been extended into a discourse of violence and hate, which is really part of a larger cultural apparatus that has so undermined the relationship between freedom and justice, freedom and equality, freedom and social responsibility that those terms drop out and freedom becomes in a sense a liability with respect to what a democratic socialist country might look like. The other side of this is that there is a really demonic notion of freedom that seems to suggest we’re all equal and we can all make all of the choices that we want — it’s up to us. In other words, it suggests that choice in this one-dimensional sense of market freedom is defined without constraints. So you are free to sleep under a bridge at night, or you’re free to sleep in the Ritz. Well, that’s just nonsense. It seems to me that choice only becomes meaningful when people have the capacity to make real choices. That’s what freedom really is about in an economic and political sense."

"Schools are increasingly either engaged in massive forms of pedagogical oppression and discipline or they’re basically disimagination machines — they kill the imagination of students and prepare them to work in utterly boring jobs without the slightest notion that they should resist because the implication seems to be that this is normal. They’re normalizing idiocy. They’re normalizing anti-intellectualism."

"Fascism first begins with language, and then gains momentum as an organizing force for shaping a culture that legitimates indiscriminate violence against entire groups — Black people, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and others considered “disposable.” In this vein, Trump portrays his critics as “villains,” describes immigrants as “losers” and “criminals,” and has become a national mouthpiece for violent nationalists and a myriad of extremists who trade in hate and violence. One recent example can be found in the Trump-like language used in the manifesto posted by the El Paso shooter."

"All pedagogy, when it matters, is contextual. Different kids come from different neighborhoods, they come from different experiences, they come from different classes, and they come from different backgrounds. Context always matters in an educational setting and matters of difference have to be addressed if you are going to connect with young people. In order for education to work, you have to make it meaningful, to make it critical, to make it transformative."

"Outside of that you have teachers who are increasingly deskilled through models of curricula that claim that objective assessments are all that matters, and that teachers just have to implement the assessments. So teachers are completely losing control over the conditions of their labor, they’re being abused, they’re not being paid properly, they’re losing their benefits, and their unions are being disseminated. This is a full-fledged attack. It’s an attack on one of the most important foundations of a democracy, it’s an attack on teachers, and it’s an attack on young people — particularly those who are marginalized by virtue of class, race, and ethnicity."