Tag Archive for: Authority

Zitate

Edward L. Bernays | the manipulation of public opinion

"No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders."

Edward L. Bernays

Richard Syron | the structure of the Federal Reserve System

"The System is just like the Church. That’s probably why I feel so comfortable with it. It’s got a pope, the chairman; and a college of cardinals, the governors and bank presidents; and a curia, the senior staff. The equivalent of the laity is the commercial banks. If you’re a naughty parishioner in the Catholic Church, you come to confession. In this system, if you’re naughty, you come to the discount window for a loan. We even have different orders of religious thought like Jesuits and Franciscans and Dominicans only we call them pragmatists and monetarists and neo-Keynesians."

Richard Syron

Friedrich August von Hayek | voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant

"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."

Friedrich August von Hayek

G. Edward Griffin | They’ve been programmed

"They've been programmed and I'm sad because I know that it's hard for people like that to take an interest - serious interest in world affairs - taken serious interest in what their elected officials are doing and they're not going to be really inclined to study and or discover the deception that's being used against them and so I'm sad because I I see all of that in the flash in my mind as being an indication of how easy it is for the masses to be manipulated"

G. Edward Griffin

Susan Sontag | Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear

"Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material."

Susan Sontag

Emma Goldman | do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have?

"Men and women ... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labour politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you in leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it."

Emma Goldman

Michael Rivero | Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker

"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."

Michael Rivero

Rainer Mausfeld | More than 50 years of elite democracy have shown us

"More than 50 years of elite democracy have shown us where this road leads. It is the path of destruction. The destruction of community, the destruction of the idea of community, the destruction of life by the millions, the destruction of cultural and civilizational substance - especially in the Third World - and the destruction of our ecological foundations. The beneficiaries of this destruction have no reason to change this path of destruction. The necessary energy for change can only come from below - from us. That is our task and that is our responsibility."

Professor Dr. Rainer Mausfeld,

John Henry Mackay | I am an Anarchist

"Ever reviled, accursed, ne’er understood,
Thou art the grisly terror of our age.
“Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude,
“Art thou, and war and murder’s endless rage.”
O, let them cry. To them that ne’er have striven
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word’s right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure,
Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! Thine secure
When each at least unto himself shall waken.
Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest’s thrill?
I cannot tell—but it the earth shall see!
I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will
Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!"

John Henry Mackay

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

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

Marvin Simkin | Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch

"Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote."

Marvin Simkin

Nicholas Murray Butler | I divide the world into three Classes

"I divide the world into three Classes – The few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens."

Nicholas Murray Butler

Florian Willet | sad human truth

"One cause is rooted in the sad human truth that 'slaves' usually dream less of what it would be like to be free than of what it would be like to be 'slave overseers'"

Dr. Dr. Florian Willet

Machiavelli | All power is robbery

"All power is robbery and all its justification is pure ideology."

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

Walt Whitman | once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved

"To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty."

Walt Whitman

Murray N. Rothbard | The State is that organization in society

"The State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion."

Murray N. Rothbard

Fritz Bauer | no to state injustice

"The certainly stirring but decisive lesson of our trials, however, demands a readiness to say an unequivocal no to state injustice." The trials demand that people renounce private and family advantages and are also prepared to make personal sacrifices if they are required to do or tolerate evil, even if it is the state that makes itself the advocate of evil."
Fritz Bauer

Aldous Huxley | A really efficient totalitarian state

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude."

Aldous Huxley | Schöne neue Welt

George Orwell | Real power is achieved

"Real power is achieved when the ruling class controls the material essentials of life, granting and withholding them from the masses as if they were privileges."

George Orwell

Dr. John Coleman | A One World Government […] in the form of a feudal system as it was in the Middle Ages.

"A One World Government and one-unit monetary system under permanent non-elected hereditary oligarchists who self-select from among their numbers in the form of a feudal system as it was in the Middle Ages.

In this One World entity, population will be limited by restrictions on the number of children per family, diseases, wars, famines, until 1 billion people who are useful to the ruling class, in areas which will be strictly and clearly defined, remain as the total world population.

There will be no middle class, only rulers and servants. All laws will be uniform under a legal system of world courts practicing the same unified code of laws, backed up by a One World Government police force and a One-World unified military to enforce laws in all former countries where no national boundaries shall exist.

The system will be on the basis of a welfare state; those who are obedient and subservient to the One World Government will be rewarded with the means to live; those who are rebellious will simply be starved to death or be declared outlaws, thus a target for anyone who wishes to kill them.

Privately-owned firearms or weapons of any kind will be prohibited."

Dr. John Coleman

John Quincy Adams | I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that the Order of Freemasonry

"I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that the Order of Freemasonry, if not the greatest, is one of the greatest moral and political evils under which the Union is now laboring ... a conspiracy of the few against the equal rights of the many ...Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good."

John Quincy Adams

Aldous Huxley | I believe that the world’s rulers

„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

Edwin Grant Conklin | Dictators seek to control men’s thoughts

“Dictators seek to control men’s thoughts as well as their bodies and so they attempt to dictate science, education and religion. But dictated education is usually propaganda, dictated history is often mythology, dictated science is pseudo-science.”

Edwin Grant Conklin

Mark Twain | If voting made any difference

"If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it"

Mark Twain

Bertolt Brecht | When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible

"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer."

Bertolt Brecht

Will Spencer | an alcoholic trying to drink yourself sober

"If your answer to every failure of government is more government, you are like an alcoholic trying to drink yourself sober."

Will Spencer

Nikolas Schreck | Satanism is a religion for the elite

“Satanism is a religion for the elite, it is a religion for leaders, it's a religion for competent people, it's not a religion for anyone who wants to be a Satanist”

Nikolas Schreck

Smedley Darlington Butler | I might have given Al Capone a few hints

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Smedley Darlington Butler

Rumi | You can beat 40 scholars with one fact

"You can beat 40 scholars with one fact, but you can't beat one idiot with 40 facts"

Rumi