- Part 4

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

in Albert Einstein

"The masses are never militaristic until their minds are poisoned by propaganda."

Albert Einstein

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 The parties, which should by no means be the state, make themselves, withdrawn from the life of the people, the state [....]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

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."

George Orwell

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

Frank Zappa | Schools train people to be ignorant

in Frank Zappa

"Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools* do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don’t give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for military-industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you’re just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you’re gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you’re gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headaches…make you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out."

Frank Zappa

Vince Ebert | Political correctness

in Vince Ebert

"Political correctness has now reached a level in our society that I see as highly questionable. It starts with the deletion of more and more postings in the social media. Postings, mind you, with content that is clearly not punishable or otherwise legally actionable. The mere fact that a certain group might feel offended by a text is enough. More and more companies and corporations are joining this unfortunate trend and issuing internal memos about required language rules or how to deal with certain topics, the disregard of which can lead to serious consequences for employees. Again, these are not criminal or justiciable matters (which, of course, should rightly be stopped), but rather some of the most harmless formulations and matters that are actually covered by the right to freedom of expression. What I find most alarming, however, is the development at our universities. Places where the free exchange of ideas and opinions should actually be part of the basic equipment. Almost every day, professors, doctoral students and other university staff tell me that they would now be risking their careers if they were to publicly question or criticize current developments at universities. Theses and assertions have even become established there in the meantime, some of which contradict a fundamental scientific factual basis. Unfortunately, I do not see the end of the line. I think it will get much worse."

Vince Ebert

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

in Karl Kraus

"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

Noam Chomsky | why the propaganda system works

in Noam Chomsky

"I think there is a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of 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

Milton Friedman | shortage of sand

in Milton Friedman

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."

Milton Friedman

George Orwell | horrible features of war

in George Orwell

"One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."

George Orwell

Hunter S. Thompson | Die Presse ist eine Bande von grausamen Schwuchteln

in Hunter S. Thompson

"The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."

Hunter S. Thompson

Winston Churchill | bodyguard of lies

in Winston Churchill

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

Winston S. Churchill

George Orwell | The most effective way to destroy people

in George Orwell

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."

George Orwell

Yuval Noah Harari | to gain control over the world

in Yuval Noah Harari

I mean science, as an institution, is interested in gaining the power — to gain control over the world

Yuval Noah Harari

Gore Vidal | As societies grow decadent

in Gore Vidal

"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests."

Gore Vidal

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

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

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

in Gore Vidal

"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