George Orwell | Until they become conscious
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."
George Orwell
Zitate
Doris Lessing | “You are in the process of being indoctrinated”
"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
Dara O’Briain | Science knows it doesn’t know everything
"Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you."
Dara O'Briain
Mark Twain | It is a great consolation in elections
"It is a great consolation in elections that only one of several candidates can be elected!"
Mark Twain
Edward Bernays | If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind
"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
Eduardo Galeano | We live in the container culture, which despises the content
"We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content."
Eduardo Galeano
Sir Anthony Hopkins | My philosophy is
"My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier."
Sir Anthony Hopkins
Volker Pispers | What do you think would be going on here
"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
"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
Bertolt Brecht | Madness becomes invisible
"Madness becomes invisible when it has reached sufficiently large dimensions."
Bertolt Brecht
Dave Smith | basic human liberties
"If you believe that the most basic human liberties ought to be contingent on taking a product from a giant pharmaceutical company then you are not liberal or left wing. You’re not a conservative or patriotic. There is only one word to describe you and that is Fascist."
Dave Smith
Harry S. Truman | Bait and bleed
"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances."
Harry S. Truman
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
"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
"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
"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
"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..."
Neil deGrasse Tyson | I’m a fan of what Mark Twain said
"I'm a fan of what Mark Twain said, he said; Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Smedley Darlington Butler | I might have given Al Capone a few hints
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Smedley Darlington Butler
Charles T. Tart | If it is not in the media… it did not happen
"If it is not in the media... it did not happen. If it did not happen, but is in the media... we believe it has happened."
Charles T. Tart
Billy Corgan | the old deal-with-the devil stuff
"The problem is that there’s not enough money in music as a business model. Where in television and vis-a-vis the advertisers and movies, there’s so much money that the controlling forces still circle around the stars in the right way, stars are taken care of better in those industries. In the music industry it’s still very much this exploitative thing, it’s still very much people signing their lives away, the old deal-with-the devil stuff. That is still going on, it’s unbelievable in this day-and-age that this is still going on."
Billy Corgan
Aldous Huxley | the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach."
Aldous Huxley
Aleister Crowley | to delight in dirty and disgusting debauches
"I have exposed myself to every form of disease, accident, and violence. I have driven myself to delight in dirty and disgusting debauches, and to devour human excrement and human flesh. I have mastered every mode of my mind and made myself a mortality more severe than any other in the world. 1000 years from now the world will be sitting in the sunset of Crowlianity"
Aleister Crowley