Because Batman is fully human and because a horrible trauma leads him — Batman

"I think the reason he’s so iconic, is because of all the superheroes he’s the only one who has no superpowers at all. He’s just an ordinary person, but what he has is a super amount of passion. And a super sense of right and wrong, morality, and so he’s just an average guy – with a billion dollars – how transforms himself into this champion of pure good, there’s nothing in it for him, he gets nothing out of this except the knowledge that he’s healing the world. And its all because of what happened to him as a child, avenging what happened to, the murder of his parents, and his being left as an orphan. And he spends his life, instead of allowing life. You know life, I often say life throws nothing but curve balls, no matter what you do to prepare for life, its going to throw a curve ball, you’re going to constantly be switching from this to that and if you let it, it can make you bitter, it can make you angry, it can make you hostile. Bruce Wayne doesn’t allow that to happen. Life throws him this huge curve ball as a child, and he takes it and he turns it into something good, and that’s why audiences love him so much. People relate to him because every-one has had dark nights of the soul, we all do, people with the most charmed lives have had dark periods. So everyone relates to the darkness that Bruce Wayne goes through, and what they admire about him is his ability to overcome it, and to turn it into something good. And I think that makes him the most incredible character for me, to play, and for audiences to enjoy."

"Batman is his hidden, demonic rage-filled side. The creature Batman creates is an absolutely sincere creature and one that he has to control but does so in a very haphazard way. Hes capable of enacting violence – and to kill – so hes constantly having to rein himself in."

"Live action television, featuring and"

"With all of this stunning technology, questions remain. Do Batmans gadgets and vehicles have any connection to the real world? Do grapnel guns, body armor, and rocket-booster cars really exist? You bet-and the real-world connections stretch further than youve ever imagined. From wingsuits to stealth fighters jets to police duty belts, real-life connections abound. Batman may fight evil in a fictional world, but much of his gear is rooted in reality."

"ONeils interpretation of Batman as a vengeful obsessive-compulsive, which he modestly describes as a return to the roots, was actually an act of creative imagination that has influenced every subsequent version of the Dark Knight."

"More important than this, however, is the idea that Batman is not just a guy in a suit, but a symbol and there are people in the film most notably The Joker who want to destroy that symbol. While Batmans identity remains secret and his motives unknown to Gothamites, he represents hope in a city that has little to spare and embodies a pursuit of justice and further, a code of behavior that quite literally threatens these criminals way of life. By throwing Gotham into chaos and testing the limits to which Batman holds himself, The Joker is not merely plying death and destruction but willfully destroying the philosophical foundations of organized society. The closest such examination another comic book-oriented film has ever attempted was the emotional throughline of the Spider-Man films. Peter Parkers struggle was almost exclusively personal, whereas Wayne not only has to find a way to maintain his moral compass, but consider what the repercussions of his heroism are to both the public and the criminals themselves."

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

"With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs."

"The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it."

"I should say that when people talk about capitalism its a bit of a joke. Theres no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. Thats right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. Thats very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World."

"I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit."

"We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in — with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources — is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems."