Tag Archive for: Society

Zitate

George Bernard Shaw | In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat

"In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific."

George Bernard Shaw

Read more

George Bernard Shaw | We are more gullible and superstitious today

"We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality."

George Bernard Shaw

Read more

Jimi Hendrix | It’s like shock therapy or a can opener

"The blues are easy to play but not to feel. The background to our music is a spiritual-blues thing. Blues is a part of America. We're making our music into electric church music—a new kind of Bible, not like in a hotel, but a Bible you carry in your hearts, one that will give you a physical feeling. We try to make our music so loose and hard-hitting so that it hits your soul hard enough to make it open. It's like shock therapy or a can opener. Rock is technically blues-based...We want them to realize that our music is just as spiritual as going to church."

Jimi Hendrix

Read more

Joost A.M. Meerloo | Ready made opinions

"Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day through the press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls [are] a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

Read more

Joost A.M. Meerloo | hammering noises of arguments and propaganda

"The continual intrusion into our minds of the hammering noises of arguments and propaganda can lead to two kinds of reactions. It may lead to apathy and indifference, the I-don't-care reaction, or to a more intensified desire to study and to understand. Unfortunately, the first reaction is the more popular one."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

Read more

Arthur Versluis | The New Inquisitions

"Totalitarianism is the modern phenomenon of total centralized state power coupled with the obliteration of individual human rights: in the totalized state, there are those in power, and there are the objectified masses, the victims."

Arthur Versluis

Read more

Manly P. Hall | when the state governs, he is ruled by fear.

"When the mob governs, man is ruled by ignorance; when the church governs, he is ruled by superstition; and when the state governs, he is ruled by fear. Before men can live together in harmony and understanding, ignorance must be transmuted into wisdom, superstition into an illuminated faith, and fear into love."

Manly P. Hall

Read more

Joost A.M. Meerloo | master of the mind

"He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind. Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition. This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses"

Joost A.M. Meerloo

Read more

BioNTech | Fear of considerable liability claims

"We may not be able to demonstrate sufficient efficacy or safety of our COVID-19 vaccine and/or variant-specific formulations to obtain permanent regulatory approval in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, or other countries where it has been authorized for emergency use or granted conditional marketing approval. Significant adverse events may occur during our clinical trials or even after receiving regulatory approval, which could delay or terminate clinical trials, delay or prevent regulatory approval or market acceptance of any of our product candidates."

BioNTech

Read more

Marshall McLuhan | All media work us over completely

"[...] All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.[...] All media are extensions of some human faculty — psychic or physical. [...] Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act—the way we perceive the world. When these ratios change, men change.[...]"

Marshall McLuhan

Read more

Eustace Mullins | that not more than eight men ran this country

"Senator LaFollette publicly charged that a money trust of fifty men controlled the United States. George F. Baker, partner of J.P. Morgan, on being queried by reporters as to the truth of the charge, replied that it was absolutely in error. He said that he knew from personal knowledge that not more than eight men ran this country."

Eustace Clarence Mullins

Read more

Fjodor Dostojewski | A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies

“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.”

Fjodor Dostojewski

Read more

Neville T. Jones | the world is supposedly rotating at 1,039 mph at the equator

"Whilst we sit drinking our cup of tea or coffee the world is supposedly rotating at 1,039 mph at the equator, whizzing around the Sun at 66,500 mph, hurtling towards Lyra at 20,000 mph, revolving around the centre of the 'Milky Way' at 500,000 mph and merrily moving at God knows what velocity as a consequence of the 'Big Bong.' And not even a hint of a ripple on the surface of our tea, yet tap the table lightly with your finger and ... !"

Neville T. Jones

Read more

Dr. Rudolph Virchow | If I could live my life over again

"If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat-diseased tissue-rather than being the cause of dead tissue. In other words, mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant."

Dr. Rudolph Virchow

Read more

Karl Rove | We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality

"People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Karl Rove

Read more

Yuval Noah Harari | flooding people with irrelevant information

"In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. [...] In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore."

Yuval Noah Harari

Read more

Isaac Newton | so great an absurdity that

"[…]that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it."

Isaac Newton

Read more