Tag Archive for: Government

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Doris Lessing | “You are in the process of being indoctrinated”

in Doris Lessing

"Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: "You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

Doris Lessing

Edward Bernays | If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind

in Edward Bernays

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it."

Edward Bernays

Marcus Aurelius | Everything we hear is an opinion

in Marcus Aurelius, Mark Aurel

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."

Marcus Aurelius

Volker Pispers | What do you think would be going on here

in Volker Pispers

"What do you think would be going on here, if more people realized what was going on?"

Volker Pispers

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

in Bertolt Brecht

"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

Carl Sagan | The bamboozle has captured us

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

Carl Sagan

Will Spencer | an alcoholic trying to drink yourself sober

in Will Spencer

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

Will Spencer

Robert A. Heinlein | There is no worse tyranny

in Robert A. Heinlein

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."

Robert A. Heinlein

Gustave Le Bon | The masses have never thirsted after truth

in Gustave Le Bon

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will."

Gustave Le Bon

Jean-Luc Godard | Cannes is a propaganda tool

in Jean-Luc Godard

"Zelensky's intervention at the Cannes festival goes without saying if you look at it from the angle of what is called "staging": a bad actor, a professional comedian, under the eye of other professionals in their own professions. I believe I must have said something along these lines a long time ago. It therefore took the staging of yet another world war and the threat of another catastrophe for us to know that Cannes is a propaganda tool like any other. They propagate Western aesthetics whilst thinking it is not a big deal, but it is just that. The truth of the images is only advancing slowly. Now imagine that the war itself is this aesthetic deployed during a world festival, whose stakeholders are the states in conflict, or rather “interests”, broadcasting representations of which we are all spectators for… you, like me. We often say “conflict of interest”, which is a tautology. There is no conflict, big or small, unless there is interest. Brutus, Nero, Biden, or Putin, Constantinople, Iraq or Ukraine, not much has changed, apart from the mass murder."

Jean-Luc Godard | "Cannes is a propaganda tool like any other. They propagate Western aesthetics..."

Plato | No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth

"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth."

Plato

Plato | Those who tell the stories rule society

"Those who tell the stories rule society."

Plato

Dr. Angela Merkel | all the major decisions did not have a demoscopic majority when they were made

in Angela Merkel, Dr. Angela Merkel

"But that is precisely why I am also deeply convinced that it is right that we have a representative democracy and not a plebiscitary democracy, and that representative democracy gives us the opportunity for certain periods of time to make decisions, then within these periods of time also to campaign for these decisions and thus to change opinions. Looking back at the history of the Federal Republic, we can say that all the major decisions did not have a demoscopic majority when they were made. The introduction of the social market economy, rearmament, the treaties with the East, the NATO dual decision, the adherence to unity, the introduction of the euro and also the increasing assumption of responsibility by the Bundeswehr in the world - almost all of these decisions were made against the majority of Germans. Only in retrospect did the attitude of the Germans change in many cases. I also think it's reasonable for the population to look at the outcome of a measure first and then form a judgment about it. I think that is an expression of the primacy of politics. And that should also be adhered to."

Dr. Angela Merkel

Jon Rappoport | Socialism is

in Jon Rappoport

"Socialism is: The taking of money (taxes) from some people who work for it and giving it to others who don't work for it. On a grand scale. The vast expansion of freebies doled out by central government. In order to create and sustain dependence. The government protection of favored persons and corporations, permitting them and aiding them to expand their fortunes without limit, regardless of what crimes they commit in the process. (Monsanto would be a fine example.) The squeezing out of those who would compete with the favored persons and corporations. The dictatorship by and for the very wealthy, pretending to be the servant of the masses. The lie that the dictatorship is being run by the masses. The gradual lowering of the standard of living for the overwhelming number of people. The propaganda claiming socialism is the path to a better world for all. In other words, socialism is a protection racket and a long con and a heartless system of elite control, posing as the greatest good. It is just another form of top-down tyranny---as old as the hills."

Jon Rappoport

Albert Jay Nock | The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social

in Albert Jay Nock

"The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing."

Albert Jay Nock

Thomas Jefferson | A government big enough to give you everything you want

in Thomas Jefferson

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have."

Thomas Jefferson

Ludwig von Mises | The champions of socialism

in Ludwig von Mises

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau."

Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

Friedrich Nietzsche | for what one has forbidden so far as a matter of principle has always been — truth alone.

in Friedrich Nietzsche

"for what one has forbidden so far as a matter of principle has always been—truth alone."

Friedrich Nietzsche

C.S. Lewis | I do not like the pretensions of Government

in Clive Staples Lewis

“I do not like the pretensions of Government -- the grounds on which it demands my obedience -- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique. I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously. On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They 'cash in'. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' 'science'-- they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled.”

C.S. Lewis

ZUBY | One of the biggest problems with college degrees

"One of the biggest problems with college degrees is they've made a lot of people think they are much smarter than they truly are. This arrogance and smugness makes them dumber because they think they're too smart to receive new information from anybody with fewer 'credentials'."

ZUBY

Russel Brand | the mainstream media is not your friend

in Russel Brand

"I’ve made a lot of mistakes, I’ve been wrong many times but I’m beginning to think I’m right about this: the mainstream media is not your friend, the culture is not your friend, the government is not your friend, big business is not your friend. They are operating collegiately in unison to create a set of systems that are beneficial to them and disadvantage you."

Russel Brand

Prof. Christoph Degenhart | The broadcasters adopt government lines in an undifferentiated manner

in Professor Christoph Degenhart

"In the portrayal of political processes, I often see a certain political one-sidedness. For example, when it comes to the topics of ecology or Europeanization, critics are always put in the right-wing corner. [....] The broadcasters adopt government lines in an undifferentiated manner. ARD and ZDF are increasingly acting as an acclamation forum for politics."

Professor Christoph Degenhart

Edmund Burke | Their passions forge their fetters

in Edmund Burke

"Until you could make out practically that great work, a combination of opposing forces, "a work of labour long, and endless praise," the utmost caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power, which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively heterogeneous mass of your states. But at this day, all these considerations are unreasonable. To what end should we discuss the limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much indeed, whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

Edmund Burke

Barack Obama | Ordinary men and women are too small-minded

in Barack Obama

"Ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign."

Barack Obama

Napoleon Bonaparte | A higher power is pushing me to a goal

in Napoleon Bonaparte

"A higher power is pushing me to a goal i don’t know. Until it is reached, i will be invulnerable, unshakeable. As soon as i’m no longer needed, one fly will be enough to knock me down."

Napoleon Bonaparte

George Bernard Shaw | We want a few mad people now

in George Bernard Shaw

"We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!"

George Bernard Shaw

George Orwell | If you want a picture of the future

in George Orwell

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."

Friedrich August von Hayek | all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny

in Friedrich August von Hayek

"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

in Thomas Leo Clancy Jr.

"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