Daniel Dennett | There’s simply no polite way
"There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion."
Daniel Dennett
Zitate
Thomas von Aquin | He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust."
Thomas von Aquin
Bill Hicks | a productive member of society
"If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in."
Bill Hicks
Friedrich Nietzsche | We live in a system
"We live in a system in which one must either be a wheel or get crushed by the wheels."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Edward Osborne Wilson | We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom
"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."
Edward Osborne Wilson
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
Ayn Rand | The smallest minority on earth
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
Ayn Rand
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
Karl Jaspers | Where is the Federal Republic headed?
"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
"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
"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
Hermann Hesse | I have been and still am a seeker
"I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books. I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams -- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves."
Hermann Karl Hesse
Woody Harrelson | Of course, we live in a completely corrupted world
"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
George Orwell | If you can feel that staying human is worth while
"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
Arthur Schopenhauer | What the herd hates most
"What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do."
Arthur Schopenhauer
Georg Orwell | What counts is that we don’t betray each other
"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
Alexander von Humboldt | The most dangerous worldview
"The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world"
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Nietzsche | the advent of nihilism
"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
Adyashanti | Enlightenment is a destructive process
"Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true."
Adyashant
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
"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
"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
"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
Winston Churchill | bodyguard of lies
"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."
Winston S. Churchill
Gore Vidal | As societies grow decadent
"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
Niccolò Machiavelli | majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances
"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
"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
