Tag Archive for: Government

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Roland Baader | Let us free ourselves from the true evil (state counterfeit money)

in Roland Baader

"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

in Klaus Kinski

"If the government was replaced by the mafia we'd probably have half as much corruption and twice as much fun."

Klaus Kinski

Benjamin Constant | When you pay the representatives of the people

in Benjamin Constant

"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

John Edgar Hoover | a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists

in John Edgar Hoover

"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

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

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

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

in Søren Kierkegaard

"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?

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

Ljudmila Ulitzkaya | Whoever comes to power has passed through a filter

in Ljudmila Ulitzkaya

"Whoever comes to power has passed through a filter that does not let decent people pass."

Ljudmila Ulitzkaya

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

Woody Harrelson | Of course, we live in a completely corrupted world

in Woodrow Tracy Harrelson, Woody Harrelson

"Of course, we live in a completely corrupted world where every government is just a bunch of businessmen working for a bunch of bigger businessmen and none of them give a shit about the people. The sad fact is no one knows how to change it, because no one knows how to take on the corporations. So I guess we’re stuck with this system until the oil runs out."

Woody Harrelson

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

George Orwell | If you can feel that staying human is worth while

in George Orwell

"If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them."

Karl Kraus | How is the world ruled and led to war?

"How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print."

Karl Kraus

Rose Wilder Lane | No state, no government exists

in Rose Wilder Lane

"The picture of the economic revolution as the final step to freedom was false as soon as I asked myself that question. For, in actual fact, The State, The Government, cannot exist. They are abstract concepts, useful enough in their place, as the theory of minus numbers is useful in mathematics. In actual living experience, however, it is impossible to subtract anything from nothing; when a purse is empty, it is empty, it cannot contain a minus ten dollars. On this same plane of actuality, no State, no Government, exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men."

Rose Wilder Lane

Noam Chomsky | Therefore it’s important to distract them

in Noam Chomsky

"The bewildered herd is a problem. We’ve got to prevent their roar and trampling. We’ve got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops." You’ve got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they’re properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they’re not competent to think. Therefore it’s important to distract them and marginalize them."

Noam Chomsky

Georges Bernanos | violence in the service of the totalitarian state

in Georges Bernanos

"It is not the use of violence that seems to me condemnable, but its mysticism, the religion of violence in the service of the totalitarian state, in the service of the dictatorship of the general welfare, considered not as a means but as an end."

Georges Bernanos

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."

Gore Vidal | The modern dictatorship doesn’t come with brown or black uniforms

"What is a president, then? He is the mouthpiece of the corporations - and nothing else. [....] We are no longer a democracy. We gave up our constitution long ago. [....] The modern dictatorship doesn't come with brown or black uniforms. We do it with entertainment, with television, with fun, fun. And an education that dumbs down."

Gore Vidal

Albert Schweitzer | Modern man is held in a frenzy of activity

in Albert Schweitzer

"Modern man is held in a frenzy of activity, so as not to reflect on the meaning of his life and the world"

Albert Schweitzer

Clarence Darrow | You can only be free if I am free

in Clarence Darrow

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free. "

Clarence Darrow

General Aladeen | Why are you guys so anti-dictators?

in Der Diktator, General Aladeen, Sacha Baron Cohen

"Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1% of the people have all the nation's wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes. And bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free, but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests."

General Aladeen

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."

Barry Jünemann | Faith is the graveyard of many truths

in Barry Jünemann

"And still, no one knows! And the truth remains hidden. Faith is the graveyard of many truths. And the mortician is the system of the self-appointed rulers of this earth. However, people often decorate it with the flowers of ignorance! Faith is the most dangerous instrument of the system since ancient Babylon.... and nobody notices it!"

Barry Jünemann

Noam Chomsky | bludgeon is to a totalitarian state

in Noam Chomsky

"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."

Noam Chomsky

Mahatma Gandhi | the truth is still the truth

in Mahatma Gandhi

"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."

Mahatma Gandhi

Voltaire | our hope our illusion

"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