Friedrich Nietzsche | A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Posts
Kurt Tucholsky | Give people more sleep
in Kurt Tucholsky"Give people more sleep - and they will be more awake when they are awake."
Kurt Tucholsky
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
Salvador Dalí | One day it will have to be officially admitted
in Salvador Dalí"One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams."
Salvador Dalí
Bertrand Russell | on the threshold of a Golden Age
in Bertrand Russell"It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a Golden Age: but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and that dragon is religion."
Bertrand Russell
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
George Bernard Shaw | I’m known for my irony
in George Bernard Shaw"I'm known for my irony. But the idea of erecting a Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor would not have occurred to even me."
George Bernard Shaw
Senator William Jenner | path of total dictatorship
in William Jenner"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite."
Senator William Jenner
Adam Weishaupt | The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment (illuminati)
in Adam Weishaupt"The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment; let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always concealed by another name, and another occupation. None is fitter than the lower degrees of Freemasonry; the public is accustomed to it, expects little from it, and therefore takes little notice of it. Next to this, the form of a learned or literary society is best suited to our purpose, and had Freemasonry not existed, this cover would have been employed; and it may be much more than a cover, it may be a powerful engine in our hands. … A Literary Society is the most proper form for the introduction of our Order into any state where we are yet strangers."
Adam Weishaupt
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
Nesta Webster | to attain the masters of the world
in Nesta Webster"The art of Illuminism lay in enlisting dupes as well as adepts and by encouraging dreams of honest visionaries or the schemes of fanatics. By flattering the vanity of ambitious egotists, by working on the unbalanced brains or by playing such passions as greed and power to make men of totally divergent aims serve the secret purpose of the sect. People with money were welcomed but kept oblivious of actual secrets. The purpose is to win power and riches, to undermine secular or religious government and to attain the masters of the world."
Nesta Webster
George Bernard Shaw | The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings
in George Bernard Shaw"The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate."
George Bernard Shaw
Carl Sagan on the importance of science education
in Carl Sagan"We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? ... Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."
Carl Sagan
Albert Pike | We always give the public their heroes
in Albert Pike"We always give the public their heroes. We give the heroes to every faction, and then people once they hear this person say all the right things, we give releases to them because he or she speaks for ‘me’. We say go there go do that and they do it. We give our power to the authorized heroes."
Albert Pike
Edward Bernays | Our invisible governors
in Edward Bernays"Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet."
Edward Bernays
Carl Gustav Jung | The Concept of the Collective Unconscious
in Carl Gustav Jung"My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."
Carl Gustav Jung
Aldous Huxley | Impersonal forces over which we have almost no control
in Aldous Huxley"Impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses."
Aldous Huxley
Mahatma Gandhi | The state represents violence
in Mahatma Gandhi"The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence."
Mahatma Gandhi
Vladimir Lenin | While the State exists, there can be no freedom
in Vladimir Lenin"While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State."
Vladimir Lenin
Thomas Jefferson | ignorant and free
in Thomas Jefferson"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."
Thomas Jefferson
Walter Lippmann | The process by which public opinions arise
in Walter Lippmann"That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. . . . as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. . . . Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach."
Walter Lippmann
Jacques Ellul | propaganda refines its techniques.
in Jacques Ellul"It is with knowledge of the human being, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his automatisms as well as knowledge of social psychology and analytical psychology that propaganda refines its techniques."
Jacques Ellul
Prof. Rainer Mausfeld | the illusion of democracy
in Prof. Rainer Mausfeld"But what could make democracy attractive to the powerful, whose very power it limits and threatens? The answer is quite simple: Nothing! For democracy means precisely to restrict the power needs of the powerful and the rich, in which they naturally have no interest. This now results in a tension between the needs of the rulers to stabilize their status and our need to feel socially autonomous and self-determined with regard to our social situation. In history, this fundamental tension has often been discharged in the form of revolutions. From the point of view of the rulers, how can this tension be defused if we want to avoid bloody revolutions?
The solution lies in 'satisfying' the citizens' need for freedom with a surrogate, with a substitute drug, namely the illusion of democracy. To create such an illusion of democracy, one needs above all - and this is where the herd metaphor comes into play again - an ideology of justification that justifies why the people are immature and in need of leadership. Furthermore, the idea of democracy, which is so attractive to the people, must be emptied of its meaning so that it is limited only to an electoral act. And finally, continuous democracy management is needed to ensure that the people want what they are supposed to want in the act of voting."
Prof. Rainer Mausfeld
Noam Chomsky | Voting is not an option
in Noam Chomsky"It’s about what you would expect from a bipartisan democracy campaign — it’s an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures."
Noam Chomsky
Gustave de Molinari | Anarchy is no guarantee
in Gustave de Molinari"Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won't kill, injure, kidnap, defraud, or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will."
Gustave de Molinari
Ernst Jünger | The most horrifying prospect is that of technocracy
in Ernst Jünger"The most horrifying prospect is that of technocracy, controlled rule exercised by maimed and mutilating minds."
Ernst Jünger
Roland Baader | The only true human right
in Roland Baader"The only true human right is the right to be left alone - by anyone you didn't invite or welcome"
Roland Baader
Joost A.M. Meerloo | democratic or totalitarian
in Joost A.M. Meerloo"In my own experience, I have been amazed to see how unrealistic are the bases for political opinion in general. Only rarely have I found a person who has chosen any particular political party - democratic or totalitarian - through study and comparison of principles."
Joost A.M. Meerloo