Philip Stott | The fundamental point
/
0 Comments
"The fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor is as misguided as it gets."
Philip Stott
Markus Krall | There was this wonderful book
"There was this wonderful book called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and there's a chapter in it where there's a planet where another planet sends all of its lunatics to do no more damage at home. And on this lunatic planet, the Keynesian economists have come to power and decided that they can abolish the scarcity of goods by abolishing the scarcity of money. They then declared the leaves of trees to be money, which of course immediately led to hyperinflation. This was then countered with a forest defoliation program. And let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, some of these "foliage faction" have made it here. They're sitting in the central banking worlds today, in the Governing Council of the ECB and at the Fed, and they're telling us with their Modern Monetary Theory that it's possible in all seriousness to overcome the scarcity of goods by abolishing the scarcity of money and being able to buy everything, anything, everything, if we just print enough money."
Markus Krall
Arthur Eddington | The problem of the source of a star’s energy
"The problem of the source of a star’s energy will be considered, by a process of exhaustion we are driven to conclude that the only possible source of a star’s energy is subatomic yet it must be confessed that the only hypothesis shows little disposition to accommodate itself to the detailed requirements of observation, and a critic might count up a large number of fatal objections."
Arthur Eddington
Marcus Aurelius | What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance
"If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance."
Marcus Aurelius
C.S. Lewis | Of all tyrannies
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
C.S. Lewis
They Live | fresh, vital. The old cynicism is gone
"The feeling is definitely there. It's a new morning in America... fresh, vital. The old cynicism is gone. We have faith in our leaders. We're optimistic as to what becomes of it all. It really boils down to our ability to accept. We don't need pessimism. There are no limits."
They Live
Ingolfur Blühdorn | Politics is losing ground dramatically to the power of the markets
"It has long been obvious in the Western tribal countries of democracy that the promises inherent in this concept will probably remain unfulfilled: Politics is losing ground dramatically to the power of the markets; supposedly democratic systems are firmly in the hands of powerfully organized interests and have less and less to do with popular sovereignty - if there ever was any. Social inequality and the disenfranchisement and reification of citizens as mere administrative objects or human resources are advancing inexorably - though every step of disenfranchisement is communicated as emancipatory gain."
Ingolfur Blühdorn
Jacques Élisée Reclus | the policy of hatred always breeds hatred
"History permits the well-founded observation that the policy of hatred always breeds hatred and fatally complicates the general situation, if not leads to final ruin. How many nations perished in this way. Oppressors as well as oppressed! Should we also be doomed? I hope not! And I owe this hope also to the anarchist thinking, which penetrates day by day more and more into the light and renews the human initiative."
Jacques Élisée Reclus
Howard Zinn | Our problem is civil obedience
"As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."
Howard Zinn
Coudenhove-Kalergi | Today, democracy is a façade of plutocracy
"The form of constitution that replaced feudalism and absolutism was democracy; the form of government, plutocracy. Today, democracy is a façade of plutocracy: since nations would not tolerate a pure form of plutocracy, they were granted nominal powers, while the real power rests in the hands of plutocrats. In republican as well as monarchical democracies, the statesmen are puppets, the capitalists are the puppeteers; they dictate the guidelines of politics, rule through purchase the public opinion of the voters, and through professional and social relationships, the ministers. Instead of the feudal structure of society, the plutocratic stepped in; birth is no more the decisive factor for social rank, but income is. Today's plutocracy is mightier than yesterday's aristocracy: because nobody is above it but the state, which is its tool and helper's helper. When there was still true blood nobility, the system of aristocracy by birth was fairer than that of the moneyed aristocracy today: because then the ruling caste had a sense of responsibility, culture and tradition, whereas the class that rules today is barren of feelings of responsibility, culture or tradition."
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi
The Analyst | Die Schäfchen gehen nirgendwo hin. Sie mögen meine Welt
"Die Schäfchen gehen nirgendwo hin. Sie mögen meine Welt. Sie wollen diese Sentimentalität nicht. Sie wollen weder Freiheit noch Selbstbestimmung. Sie wollen kontrolliert werden. Sie sehnen sich nach dem Komfort der Gewissheit. Und das bedeutet, ihr zwei, zurück in euren Kapseln, bewusstlos und allein, genau wie sie."
The Analyst (Matrix Resurrections (2021))
Jason Evert | they overlook their power to turn our hearts
"When a woman dresses modestly, I can take her seriously as a woman because she doesn’t look like she’s begging for attention. She knows that she’s worth discovering. Such humility is radiant. Unfortunately, many women are so preoccupied with turning men’s heads that they overlook their power to turn our hearts."
Jason Evert
Nikolaus Kopernikus | So far as hypotheses are concerned
"So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it."
Nikolaus Kopernikus
Charlie Chaplin | As for politics, I’m an anarchist
"As for politics, I’m an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can’t stand caged animals. People must be free."
Charlie Chaplin
Roland Baader | It is … a naivety that cannot be excused by anything to believe
"It is ... a naivety that cannot be excused by anything to believe that a state can be total in the economic sphere without being so at the same time in the political and spiritual sphere ...." ... Democracy and socialism are not a tautology (à la Oskar),but radical, mutually exclusive opposites. Democracy is a method of limiting and controlling power. Socialism, on the other hand, always denies the individual freedom of choice of individuals over their economic preferences and life goals (supposedly in favor of the general public, the collective); thus socialism always assigns sovereignty over the decisive existential forces and life motivations to the state or a party or political cliques, and thus socialism is never a system or method for limiting power, but always and everywhere pseudo-moral justification for patronizing life, carte blanche for cynically moralizing unrestrained power."
Roland Baader
Julian Assange | Every time we witness an injustice
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice."
Julian Assange
Martin Luther | You can’t stop a flock of birds from flying over your head
"You can't stop a flock of birds from flying over your head. But you can prevent it from nesting in your hair"
Martin Luther
Dr. Jörn Berninger | politically or medially predetermined thought prison
"There are always events that are played up in the media and lead to more and more people subscribing to the opinion given from the outside. This in turn leads them to build up beliefs that become a thought prison. If one is stuck in such a politically or medially predetermined thought prison, one begins to identify with it and hardly finds a way out. You have to look for a loophole to break out of this thought prison."
Dr. Jörn Berninger
Dr. Markus Krall | After 3 years of propaganda is apparent
"After 3 years of propaganda is apparent:
- Covid was just flu
- The mortality figures were fake
- Masks were useless
- Vaccination was useless and harmful
- School closures were useless
- The high priests of the Covid cult are corrupt profiteers
What now?"
Dr. Markus Krall
Michael Wendler | We are living at the peak of the time of the false world
"We are living at the peak of the time of the false world. That's why being real gets you shunned. Why speaking truth gets you scorned and banned. Society is at the tipping point of the height of illussion. It takes serious courage to be real right now. Please be brave!"
Michael Wendler
Michael Hoffman | These blind slaves are told they are ‘free’
"These blind slaves are told they are 'free' and 'highly educated' even as they march behind signs that would cause any medieval peasant to run screaming away from them in panic-stricken terror. The symbols that modern man embraces with the naive trust of an infant would be tantamount to billboards reading, ‘This way to your death and enslavement,’ to the understanding of the traditional peasant of antiquity"
Michael A. Hoffman II
Manly P. Hall | If this inner doctrine were always concealed from the masses
"If this inner doctrine were always concealed from the masses, for whom a simpler code had been devised, is it not highly probable that the exponents of every aspect of modern civilization – philosophic, ethical, religious, and scientific-are ignorant of the true meaning of the very theories and tenets on which their beliefs are founded? Do the arts and sciences that the race has inherited from older nations conceal beneath their fair exterior a mystery so great that only the most illumined intellect can grasp its import? Such is undoubtedly the case."
Manly P. Hall
Ludwig Feuerbach | What man does not recognize from himself
"What man does not recognize from himself, he does not recognize at all."
Ludwig Feuerbach
Johann Gottlieb Fichte | will never rise to idealism
"A character flabby by nature, or slackened and bent by mental bondage to learned luxury and vanity, will never rise to idealism."
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Winston Churchill | There is only published opinion
"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."
Winston Churchill
William Bathgate | The less of ” proximity” the less like a planet
"This is the testimony of all aeronauts. The earth looks like a huge basin, the edges thereof being on a level with the eye, and the bottom of it miles under one's feet. How disappointing to ascend for the purpose of seeing a shining planet and to come down after having seen only a huge, dark terrestrial basin! The less of " proximity" the less like a planet."
William Bathgate
Niklas Luhmann | the media don’t depict reality, they create it
"Sure, the media don't depict reality, they create it! And that's why we need counter-publicity!"
Niklas Luhmann
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld | The power of radio
"The power of radio can be compared only with the power of the atomic bomb."
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
Wernher von Braun | the last card is the alien card
“And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie"
Wernher von Braun,1977 (cité par Carol Rosin)
Bertrand Russel | I should like to say two things
"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say…I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more closely and closely interconnected we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way and if we are to live together and not die together we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
Bertrand Russell
Machiavelli | He who has once begun to live by robbery
"He who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others."
Machiavelli
John George Abizaid | The earth is flat and stationary
"The earth is flat and stationary, while the sun, moon and stars are in constant motion" This is the Enlightenment of the World
John George Abizaid
John Hampden | We know this by patient and long continued investigations
"We know this by patient and long continued investigations - the surface of water is a LEVEL SURFACE. This is the key which is unlocking the minds of the people and letting in a flood of light upon the question of the shape of the earth. We know consequently that the surface of earth is a plane surface and that the earth itself can NOT be a globe."
John Hampden