Bertrand Russell | When all experts agree, you need to watch out
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"When all experts agree, you need to watch out."
Bertrand Russell
Robert Simmon | That ball became the famous Blue Marble
"The hard part was creating a flat map of the Earth’s surface with four months’ of satellite data. Reto Stockli, now at the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, did much of this work. Then we wrapped the flat map around a ball. My part was integrating the surface, clouds, and oceans to match people’s expectations of how Earth looks from space. That ball became the famous Blue Marble."
Robert Simmon
Chris Hedges | Empire of Illusion
"A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is left to interpret reality through illusion. Random facts or obscure bits of data and trivia are used either to bolster illusion and give it credibility, or discarded if they interfere with the message. The worse reality becomes—for example, as foreclosures and unemployment skyrocket—the more people seek refuge and comfort in illusions. When opinions cannot be distinguished from facts, when there is no universal standard to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in reporting the events of the day, when the most valued skill is the ability to entertain, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe. This is the real danger of pseudo-events and why pseudo-events are far more pernicious than stereotypes. They do not explain reality, as stereotypes attempt to, but replace reality. Pseudo-events redefine reality by the parameters set by their creators. These creators, who make massive profits selling illusions, have a vested interest in maintaining the power structures they control."
Chris Hedges
Wolfgang Borchert | We are the generation without ties and without depth
"We are the generation without ties and without depth. Our depth is the abyss. We are the generation without happiness, without home and without farewell. Our sun is narrow, our love is cruel and our youth is without youth. And we are the generation without boundaries, without restraint and protection - cast out of the playpen of childhood into a world prepared for us by those who despise us for it."
Wolfgang Borchert
Martha Gellhorn | to keep any control over our world and lives
"People often say, with pride, 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.' ... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics."
Martha Gellhorn
Max Nordau | The citizen is in chains
"The form in which all European states are governed today allows the services demanded of citizens to be squandered on foolish, frivolous and criminal undertakings. The whim of individuals, the self-interest of vanishingly small minorities, all too often determines the goal towards which the efforts of the whole are directed. Thus the individual citizen works and bleeds so that wars may be waged which destroy his life or his prosperity, so that fortresses, palaces, railroads, harbors or canals may be built from which neither he nor nine-tenths of the nation will ever derive the slightest benefit, so that new offices may be created, which will make the state machine still more cumbersome, the friction of its wheels still harder, in which he will lose still more of his time, still more of his freedom, so that officials may be highly paid who have no other purpose than to lead an ornamental existence at his expense and to make his existence more difficult; In a word, he works and bleeds in order to make his yoke heavier and his chains tighter and to create the possibility of obtaining even more work and even more blood from him...."
Max Nordau
Bernard Edouard Harcourt | The eternal recurrence of new forms of unbearable servitude
"The eternal recurrence of new forms of unbearable servitude, and with them, new forms of resistance, demonstrates that human history is not a progressive march toward absolute knowledge, the demise of the state, or the end of history, but rather a constant struggle for our own subjugation, a battle that must be fought anew to establish our subjectivity, ourselves as subjects. Once we grasp the recurring nature of this struggle, only then will we recognize the task that confronts us today and in the future: to resist the ever-pressing forms of tyrannical power, that brutal desire for subjugation, and the ongoing, ever-renewed attempts to rule through fear, terror, and absolute domination."
Bernard Edouard Harcourt
Nick Cohen | Compulsive liars shouldn’t frighten you
"Compulsive liars shouldn’t frighten you. They can harm no one, if no one listens to them. Compulsive believers, on the other hand: they should terrify you. Believers are the liars’ enablers. Their votes give the demagogue his power. Their trust turns the charlatan into the president. Their credulity ensures that the propaganda of half-calculating and half-mad fanatics has the power to change the world."
Nick Cohen
Roland Baader | We have the entire political elite against us
"We have the entire political elite against us. [...] The development will be a bad one. [...] I see nothing good, nothing good at all, I see no approach anywhere. The problems have been dealt with by the same means that created the problems in the first place. [...]
We will get more and more socialism, new kinds of socialism, new kinds of fascism. In any case, more totalitarianism, less freedom and an overall radicalization. We will also experience riots, we will have unrest and explosive growths in crime."
Roland Baader
George Orwell | Who controls the past controls the future
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past"
George Orwell
Lenin | Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world
"Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world."
Vladimir Lenin
Neil deGrasse Tyson | If you want to assert a truth
"If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it’s not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Leo Tolstoi | The power of government rests on the ignorance of the people
"The power of government rests on the ignorance of the people, and it knows this and therefore will always fight against enlightenment."
Leo Tolstoi
Viktor Schauberger | progressive decline of culture
"Despite its apparently high technical culture, ‘civilized humanity’ has reached such a low ethical level that it no longer realizes that such physical and moral decay is nothing other than the progressive decline of culture. For this reason, the sacred duty of people who are aware of the gravity of their mistakes is to constantly strive for the final correction of the consequences of mistakes."
Viktor Schauberger
Johannes Kepler | it is my pleasure to taunt mortal men with the candid acknowledgement
"Now, eighteen months after the first light, three months after the true day, but a very few days after the pure Sun of that most wonderful study began to shine, nothing restrains me; it is my pleasure to yield to the inspired frenzy, it is my pleasure to taunt mortal men with the candid acknowledgement that I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far, far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God Himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study Him."
Johannes Kepler
Yuval Noah Harari | In a world flooded with irrelevant information
"In a world flooded with irrelevant information, clarity is power."
Yuval Noah Harari
Pete Holmes | Some people think God created the universe
"Some people think God created the universe. Some people think nothing created the universe, which is the funniest guess and the nothing people make fun of the God people. They say, God doesn't exist. I'm like, okay, maybe. But you know what? Definitely doesn't exist. Nothing. That's the defining characteristic of nothing is that it doesn't exist. So what are we talking about? Either you think it's God, something you can't see, touch, taste, photograph, and science can't prove, or you think it's nothing, something you can't see. Touch, taste, photograph, and science can't prove. But I think we can all agree if nothing, if you are nothing, sometimes spontaneously erupts into everything. That's a pretty goddamn magical fucking nothing you guys and ask.
Ask the nothing people, what happens when you die? They'll tell you nothing. You go into nothing. I'm like, you mean you merge back with your creator? That's heaven, bitch."
Pete Holmes
Vince Ebert | preliminary form of science
"For example, if I suspect that there might still be beer in the fridge and I check, then in principle I'm already doing a preliminary form of science. Big difference to theology. In theology, assumptions are not usually tested. So if I just say “there's beer in the fridge”, I'm a theologian. If I look, I'm a scientist. If I look, find nothing and still claim there's beer in it - then I'm an esoteric!"
Vince Ebert
Edwin Conklin | The probability of life originating from accident
"The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory."
Edwin Conklin
Dr. Robert Malone | We have reached the point in our absurdity
"We have reached the point in our absurdity where distinguished scientists are censored by total dumbshits."
Dr. Robert Malone
Milosz Matuschek | Permanent Toxic Rape of Consciousness
"Almost a hundred years ago, the philosopher John Dewey said that we are living in the greatest flood of mass suggestion that mankind has ever seen. But in 100 years, the superlative has only swelled, albeit without this being publicized today. Edward Bernays called propaganda the “executive arm of the invisible government”. And he recognized that propaganda is to democracies what violence is to dictators. Perhaps that would be a contemporary definition of propaganda: it is a Permanent Toxic Rape of Consciousness, or PTRC for short. It is a permanent mindfuck by governments and corporate business, mediated by the media, carried out by bought comedians à la Böhmermann, pseudo-journalists à la Lanz, pseudo-intellectuals à la Precht, pseudo-health politicians, such as the pharmaceutical and drugs minister Lauterbach, pseudo-defence politicians such as Strack-Rheinmetall-Zimmermann, and other parvenus such as Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, Eckart von Hirschhausen, Sarah Bosetti and other stirrup holders in editorial offices, theaters or foundations. "
Milosz Matuschek
Reginald McKenna | I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told
"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."
Reginald McKenna
Robert H. Hemphill | the tragic absurdity, of our hopeless position
"If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent, on the Commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar, we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are, absolutely, without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity, of our hopeless position, is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most, important subject, intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse, unless it becomes widely understood, and the defects remedied very soon."
Robert H. Hemphill
Harold Wallace Rosenthal | Our power has been created through the manipulation of the national monetary system
"Our power has been created through the manipulation of the national monetary system.. The Federal Reserve system fitted our plan nicely since it is owned by us, but the name implies that it is a government institution. From the very outset, our purpose was to confiscate all the gold and silver, replacing them with worthless non- redeemable papen notes...
We Jews have put issue upon issue to the American people. Then we promote both sides of the issue as confusion reigns. With their eyes fixed on the issues, they fail to see who is behind every scene. We Jews toy with the American public as a cat toys with a mouse..."
Harold Wallace Rosenthal
George Bernard Shaw | Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance
"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."
George Bernard Shaw
Emma Goldman | Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind
"Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…"
Emma Goldman
Dr. Angela Merkel | Almost all of these decisions were made against the majority of Germans
"Almost all of these decisions were made against the majority of Germans. In many cases, the Germans' attitude has only changed in retrospect. I also think it is reasonable for the population to first look at the result of a measure and then form a judgment about it. I believe this is an expression of the primacy of politics. And that should be upheld."
Dr. Angela Merkel
Frederick B Hodges | everything we have is for our benefit
"The reason we have troops overseas in Germany is not to protect Germans, everything we have is for our benefit."
Frederick Benjamin „Ben“ Hodges
Alice Cooper | I don’t like to mix politics and rock ‘n’ roll
"I don't like to mix politics and rock 'n' roll, i don't look at Bono, Sting and Bruce Springsteen as political. I look at them as being humanitarian. I'll contribute to anything humanitarian. Helping people who can't help themselves. But when musicians are telling people who to vote for, I think that's an abuse of power. You're telling your fans not to think for themselves, just to think like you. Rock 'n' roll is about freedom — and that's not freedom."
Alice Cooper
Benedikt Lux | We replaced the entire leadership of almost all of Berlin’s security
"Measured against what had gone before, we achieved a huge success. We replaced the entire leadership of almost all of Berlin's security agencies and brought in some pretty good people. In the fire department, the police, the public prosecutor's office and also the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. I very much hope that this will have a noticeable effect in the future."
Benedikt Lux
Lester Neil Smith | It’s often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth
"It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance."
Lester Neil Smith
Spyridon Kakos | The evidence provided by Galileo […] do not even pass simple scrutiny
"The evidence provided by Galileo to support the heliocentric system do not even pass simple scrutiny, while modern physics has ruled for a long time now against both heliocentric and geocentric models as depictions of the “truth”. As Einstein eloquently said, the debate about which system is chosen is void of any meaning from a physics’ point of view. At the end, the selection of the center is more a matter of choice rather than a matter of ‘truth’ of any kind. And this choice is driven by specific philosophical axioms penetrating astronomy for hundreds of years now. From Galileo to Hubble, the Copernican principle has been slowly transformed to a dogma followed by all mainstream astronomers. It is time to challenge our dogmatic adherence to the anti-humanism idea that we are insignificant in the cosmos and start making true honest science again, as Copernicus once postulated."
Spyridon Kakos
Stephen Hawking | but one has to be careful not to be labelled a crank
"Since we can’t change the way the universe began, the question of whether time travel is possible is one of whether we can subsequently make space–time so warped that one can go back to the past. I think this is an important subject for research, but one has to be careful not to be labelled a crank. If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately. No government agency could afford to be seen to be spending public money on anything as way out as time travel. Instead one has to use technical terms like closed time-like curves, which are code for time travel. Yet it is a very serious question."
Stephen Hawking
