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
Posts
Arno Gruen | While those who can no longer bear the loss of human values
in Arno Gruen"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
Friedrich Nietzsche | We live in a system
in Friedrich Nietzsche"We live in a system in which one must either be a wheel or get crushed by the wheels."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Ayn Rand | The smallest minority on earth
in Ayn Rand"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
in Erich Fromm"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
Karl Jaspers | Where is the Federal Republic headed?
in Karl Jaspers"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 The parties, which should by no means be the state, make themselves, withdrawn from the life of the people, the state [....]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
Dr. Otto Heinrich Warburg | dangerous breeding ground for cancer cells
in Dr. Otto Heinrich Warburg"Deprive a cell 35% of its oxygen for 48 hours and it will become cancerous."
Dr. Otto Heinrich Warburg
Caitlin Johnstone | The empire still fears the public
in Caitlin Johnstone"The empire still fears the public. If it didn't it wouldn't bother rolling out so much propaganda ahead of all its depraved actions—it would just act. They work so hard to manufacture our consent because they're still afraid of what we'll do to them if we decide we don't consent."
Caitlin Johnstone
Thomas Jefferson | When government fears the people
in Thomas Jefferson"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson
Georg Orwell | What counts is that we don’t betray each other
in George Orwell"It’s not so much staying alive, it’s staying human that’s important. What counts is that we don’t betray each other."
Georg Orwell
Friedrich Nietzsche | the advent of nihilism
in Friedrich Nietzsche"What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism […] For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Henry Louis Mencken | The whole drift of our law
in Henry Louis Mencken"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society."
Henry Louis Mencken
George Orwell | A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing
in George Orwell"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is "not done"… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
Niccolò Machiavelli | majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances
in Niccolò Machiavelli"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."
Niccolò Machiavelli
George Orwell | These people don’t see that
in George Orwell"These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you."
Bertrand Russell | Fear is the main source of superstition
in Bertrand Russell"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Bertrand Russell
Voltaire | our hope our illusion
in Voltaire"One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion"
Voltaire
Bärbel Bohley | the thorough research into the Stasi structures
in Bärbel Bohley"All these investigations, the thorough research into the Stasi structures, the methods with which they worked and still work, all this will fall into the wrong hands. One will examine these structures in detail - in order to then take them over. They will be adapted a little to fit a free Western society. They won't necessarily arrest the troublemakers either. There are more subtle ways to disarm someone. But the secret bans, the watching, the suspicion, the fear, the isolation and exclusion, the branding and muzzling of those who don't conform - that will come back, believe me. Institutions will be created that will work much more effectively, much more finely than the Stasi. The constant lying will also come back, the disinformation, the fog in which everything loses its contour."
Bärbel Bohley
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann | The process of struggling for public opinion
in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann"The process of struggling for public opinion has nothing to do with truth, but with domination."
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
Arnold Gehlen | devilish is he who erects the kingdom of lies
in Arnold Gehlen"And last: devilish is he who erects the kingdom of lies and forces other people to live in it. This still goes beyond the humiliation of spiritual separation, then the kingdom of the perverse world is erected, and the Antichrist wears the mask of the Savior (...). The devil is not the slayer, he is Diabolos, the slanderer, is the 'God' in whom the lie is not cowardice, as in man, but domination. He spills the last resort of despair, the knowledge, he instigates the realm of madness, because it is madness to settle in the lie."
Arnold Gehlen
Thomas Sowell | so many successful politicians are such shameless liars
in Thomas Sowell"The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy."
Thomas Sowell
Ignazio Silone | You can’t beg your freedom from someone
in Ignazio Silone“You can live in a dictatorship and be free – on one condition: that you fight the dictatorship. The man who thinks with is own mind and keeps it uncorrupted is free. The man who fights for what he thinks is right is free. But you can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you’re lazy, obtuse or servile within yourself, you’re not free. Even without any violent coercion, you’re a slave. You can’t beg your freedom from someone. You have to seize it – everyone as much as he can."
Ignazio Silone
Felix Frankfurter | The real rulers in Washington are invisible
in Felix Frankfurter"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."
Felix Frankfurter,
H.G. Wells | Countless people [….] will hate the new world order
in Herbert George Wells"Countless people, from maharajas to millionaires and from pukha sahibs to pretty ladies, will hate the new world order, be rendered unhappy by the frustration of their passions and ambitions through its advent and will die protesting against it."
Herbert George Wells
Albert Einstein | The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb
in Albert Einstein"The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses."
Albert Einstein
Leo Tolstoy | Governments not only are not necessary
in Leo Tolstoi, Leo Tolstoy"Governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions."
Leo Tolstoy
José Ortega y Gasset | Universal suffrage
in José Ortega y Gasset"Universal suffrage did not give the masses the right to decide, but to approve the decision of one elite or another."
José Ortega y Gasset