George Orwell | If you want a picture of the future
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."
George Orwell
Zitate
Friedrich August von Hayek | all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny
"Through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny."
Friedrich August von Hayek
Tom Clancy | What the government is good at is collecting taxes
"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else."
Tom Clancy
Erich Fromm | Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable
"Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth."
Erich Fromm
Roland Baader | Let us free ourselves from the true evil (state counterfeit money)
"It may be too late to avert the financial disaster that lies ahead of us, but we must at least prevent the road to financial ruin from also becoming a road to servitude. Let's talk our heads off and write our fingers to the bone, let's make ourselves outsiders and ridiculed figures if necessary, but let's fight to ensure that the basis of people's freedom, the market economy, is not presented to them as the alleged culprit and executed by the henchmen of power under the false pretext. Otherwise, it is we ourselves, our happiness and prosperity and freedom, who die with the market. Let us free ourselves from the true evil, from the fuel of presumptuous domination and destructive lies: from state counterfeit money."
Roland Baader
Klaus Kinski | If the government was replaced by the mafia
"If the government was replaced by the mafia we'd probably have half as much corruption and twice as much fun."
Klaus Kinski
Dr Mike Yeadon | have taken as fact that viruses exist without ever reviewing the original papers
"I’m aware this two page backgrounder & experimental proposal aims to show whether or not viruses exist, focussing on SARS-CoV-2. I’m a signatory because, having given a lot of thought to the entire proposition, I now believe it’s yet another of the lies to which we’ve been subject. In the case of scientists, even those in commercial drug discovery, have taken as fact that viruses exist without ever reviewing the original papers."
Dr Mike Yeadon
Benjamin Constant | When you pay the representatives of the people
"When you pay the representatives of the people, you do not arouse in them an interest in performing their functions conscientiously; rather, you interest them only in continuing to secure for themselves the exercise of those functions."
Benjamin Constant
Voltaire | men can be influenced by making them think for themselves
"Controversy never convinced any man; men can be influenced by making them think for themselves, by seeming to doubt with them, by leading them as if by the hand, without their perceiving it. A good book lent to them, which they read at leisure, produces upon them surer effects, because they do not then blush to be subjugated by the superior reason of an antagonist."
Voltaire
John Edgar Hoover | a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists
"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent."
John Edgar Hoover
Viktor Emil Frankl | The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal
"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.[...] Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true."
Viktor Emil Frankl
Ayn Rand | You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences
„Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment—so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.“
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand | He is free to evade reality
"He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see."
Ayn Rand
Arno Gruen | While those who can no longer bear the loss of human values
"While those who can no longer bear the loss of human values are considered insane, those who have separated from their human roots are certified normal."
Arno Gruen
Thomas von Aquin | The greatest kindness
"The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth."
Thomas von Aquin
Daniel Dennett | There’s simply no polite way
"There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion."
Daniel Dennett
Thomas von Aquin | He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust."
Thomas von Aquin
James Ison | Many more people would have died
"Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen who took action within the first two minutes of this shooting."
James Ison
Bill Hicks | a productive member of society
"If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in."
Bill Hicks
Friedrich Nietzsche | We live in a system
"We live in a system in which one must either be a wheel or get crushed by the wheels."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Ulrich Baretzky | The most beautiful thing for me about Formula E
"The most beautiful thing for me about Formula E is the great sound of the diesel generators that are used to charge the batteries of the racing cars!"
Ulrich Baretzky
Edward Osborne Wilson | We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom
"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."
Edward Osborne Wilson
William Egan Colby | The CIA controls everyone of significance in the major media
"The CIA controls everyone of significance in the major media, where it spent about 30% of its budget on covered press personnel and programs"
William Egan Colby
Albert Einstein | The masses are never militaristic
"The masses are never militaristic until their minds are poisoned by propaganda."
Albert Einstein
Ayn Rand | The smallest minority on earth
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
Ayn Rand
Erich Fromm | The holders of authority and those who take advantage of it
"The holders of authority and those who take advantage of it must convince people of this fiction and put to sleep their realistic, that is to say, critical, faculty of thought. Every thinking person knows the methods of propaganda, methods by which critical judgment is destroyed and the mind is lulled until it submits to clichés that stultify people because they make them dependent, depriving them of the ability to trust their eyes and their judgment. This function, in which they believe, blinds them to reality."
Erich Fromm
Søren Kierkegaard | There are two ways to be fooled
"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true."
Søren Kierkegaard
Karl Jaspers | Where is the Federal Republic headed?
"Every four years it elects the Bundestag. The lists or persons submitted to it by the parties are already elected beforehand by the parties. The process of this hidden preliminary election, which is the actual election, is convoluted; the names for the constituency lists and the state lists are not drawn up in the same way. But it is always the party committees, never the people, who would be involved in this decisive beginning. One must be a party member in order to participate somewhere in this election and to be able to be set up. Even those who are party members, as such, have little effect in the nominations. The decisive factor is the party hierarchy and bureaucracy.[...] Even the elections are not really elections, but acclamations to the party oligarchy. [....] The parties, which should by no means be the state, make themselves, withdrawn from the life of the people, the state [....] The governance of the state is in the hands of the party oligarchy [....] Their position, not limited by any tension to other power, seduces [....] the parties to want to occupy the seats by their own people. This is the reward for party work, the spoils of victory after the electoral battle [....]"
Karl Jaspers