Ursula von der Leyen | Justice always involves two sides

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"Justice always involves two sides: the one who pays for it and the one who gets it." Ursula von der Leyen

Aldous Huxley | Under a scientific dictatorship

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"If the first half of the twentieth century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engineers — and the twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave New World. [....] The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles, and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship, education will really work' with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown." Aldous Huxley |

Sir Fred Hoyle | So, does the earth spin?

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"We can talk with precision of a body as spinning around relative to something or another, but there is no such thing as absolute spin: the Earth is not spinning to those of us who live on its surface and our point of view is as good as anyone else’s – but no better." (F. Hoyle: Frontiers of Astronomy, New York, Harper & Row, 1966, p304.) Sir Fred Hoyle

Walter van der Kamp | Since Galileo science has shed logical proofs in favour of plausibility

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"Actually neither this Galileo, nor his mentor Copernicus, had a shred of truly tangible and unequivocal evidence for their heliocentric belief – and well do historians, astronomers, and philosophers of science know it! As I recently found it succinctly expressed in a research paper “Since Galileo science has shed logical proofs in favour of plausibility. Indeed, by this “scientific method” of adding plausible explanations to plausible explanations astronomy has arrived at the present view of the cosmos. However, those who forget that “plausible” and “proven” are not synonyms inevitably will see their chickens come home to roost." Walter van der Kamp

Clark C. McClelland | History is created, manipulated and written by those who are predominantly on the Victorious side

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"History is created, manipulated and written by those who are predominantly on the Victorious side of the nation which has supreme political, and especially military, dominance. Any ‘truth’ which has the slightest potential of weakening their total hold over the masses is not tolerated. Any truth which can impact their power is squelched or cunningly hidden by them, usually in a manufactured media release to the unsuspecting public, often in a jovial manner to render the information a laughing matter and display it as harmless." Clark C. McClelland

Aldous Huxley | The really hopeless victims of mental illness

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The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish "the illusion of individuality," but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But "uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too. . . . Man is not made to be an automaton, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | The most powerful figment of the imagination is public opinion

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"The most powerful figment of the imagination is public opinion: no one knows exactly who makes it, no one has ever met it personally, but everyone lets themselves be tyrannized by it!" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Aldous Huxley | I believe that the world’s rulers

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„Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large-scale biological and atomic war—in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.“ Aldous Huxley

Prof. Steven Weinberg | The International Space Station is an orbital turkey

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"The International Space Station is an orbital turkey....No important science has come out of it. I could almost say no science has come out of it. And I would go beyond that and say that the whole manned spaceflight program, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value." Prof. Steven Weinberg

Truman Show | We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented

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Mike Michaelson : Christof, let me ask you, why do you think that Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world until now? Christof : We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that. Truman Show

Brian Cox | There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat

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“There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat. Nobody in human history, as far as I know, has thought the world was flat. The Greeks measured the radius of the Earth. I cannot conceive of a reason why anybody would think the world is flat. There are interesting bits of physics that tell you you live on a spinning planet and one of them is called the Coriolis force, which is the force that's responsible for causing storm systems to rotate on the planet. So when you see those beautiful pictures of storms spinning around and rotating, the reason for that is that we live on a spinning planet. It's probably the most nonsensical suggestion that a thinking human being could possibly make. It is drivel.” Brian Edward Cox

Max Planck | Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind

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"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with." Max Planck 

Max Goldt | This newspaper is an organ of infamy

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"This newspaper is an organ of infamy. It is wrong to read it. Someone who contributes to this newspaper is absolutely unacceptable socially. It would be wrong to be friendly or even polite to one of its editors. One must be as unkind to them as the law will just allow. They are bad people who do wrong." Max Goldt

Marcia Angell | It is simply no longer possible

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“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine” Marcia Angell

Richard Horton | The case against science is straightforward

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“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness” Richard Horton

Michio Kaku | Why do we think that?

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"Why do we think that? Because we have a theory called string theory, it is fantastic it is incredible. It has astounded the world of mathematics, and physics and now you can't move in the physics world without bumping into somebody who wants to talk about the 10th Dimension the 11th Dimension the Multiverse hyperspace time travel. All the things that were once considered science fiction are now centerpiece in our understanding of the nature of everything." Dr. Michio Kaku

George A. Keysworth | All government agencies lie part of the time

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"All government agencies lie part of the time, but NASA is the only one I've ever encountered that does so routinely. " George A. Keyworth

George Francis Rayner Ellis | People need to be aware

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"People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that." George Francis Rayner Ellis 

Leo Tolstoi | There is something in the human spirit that will survive

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"There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes." Leo Tolstoi

Theodore J. Kaczynski | These engineered human

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"These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals." Theodore J. Kaczynski

Walter Rathenau | Approximately 300 men determine the fate of this world

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"Approximately 300 men that know each other and that appoint their successors themselves determine the fate of this world. Their power exists in absolute confidentiality." Walter Rathenau

José Luis Sampedro Sáez | They govern us through fear

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"They govern us through fear." José Luis Sampedro Sáez

Vince Ebert | They would become afraid of something else virtually overnight

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"I'm pretty sure: if the climate change thing was miraculously solved, many Germans wouldn't breathe a sigh of relief. They would become afraid of something else virtually overnight." Vince Ebert

Gerald G. Grosz | We just live in an open psychiatric ward

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"We just live in an open psychiatric ward, the most serious cases sit on the government bench, the offspring stick on the streets or smear pictures. All of them would probably be better off in the padded cell and yes the world would be saved." Gerald G. Grosz

Ernst Reinhardt | It takes courage to seek the truth

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"It takes courage to seek the truth without knowing if you can bear it." Ernst Reinhardt

David Graeber | We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth

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"We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." David Graeber

Ludwig von Mises | Nothing can make a demagogue more popular today

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"Nothing can make a demagogue more popular today than when he repeatedly calls for sharp taxes against the rich [...] Wealth levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are quite extraordinarily popular with the masses who do not have to pay them." Ludwig von Mises

Roland Baader | Ecologism is a decay product of Marxism

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"Ecologism is (among quite a few other ism) a decay product of Marxism. The failed "impoverishment thesis" is replaced by the eco- and climate catastrophe. The goal is the extinction of capitalism - and thus of Western freedom." Roland Baader

Tony Benn | I think there are two ways in which people are controlled

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"I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all, frighten people, and secondly, demoralise them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. And I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people... ‘We don’t want people to be educated, healthy and confident, because they would get out of control." Tony Benn