Surveillance State Quotes – Reflections on Monitoring

"The Government are extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept in mind, however, is that in every case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well pleases!"

Sir Josiah Stamp

"[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a National system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a chargeback for our fiat paper currency.

Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living. They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges.

They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges.

This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor or to this fraud which we will call “Social Insurance.” Without realizing it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur and in this manner; every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and, we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America."

Edward Mandell House

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

Henry Louis Mencken

"TIME: Was there a particular kind of terrorism in Germany associated with Baader, Meinhof, and the others?

Helmut Schmidt: I suspect that all forms of terrorism—whether Germany’s RAF, Italy’s Brigate Rosse, the French, the Irish, the Spanish, or Arab groups—differ little in their contempt for human life. They are surpassed by certain forms of state terrorism.

TIME: Are you serious? Who do you mean?

Helmut Schmidt: Let’s leave it at that. But I do mean what I’m saying."

Helmut Schmidt

"The state is supposed to protect the poor. — From what, exactly? From prosperity."

Unbekannt

"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."

Claude Frédéric Bastiat

"Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent every year to control the public mind"

Noam Chomsky

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini

"For Germany, ‘deep state’ means a structure of its own—one that is not subject to oversight, not bound by the rule of law, and able to act according to its own interests and expediency, without legal constraints and without control by a democracy based on the separation of powers."

Hajo Funke

"The state, rather, is a parasitic institution that lives off the wealth of its subjects, concealing its anti-social, predatory nature beneath a public-interest veneer."

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

"We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..."

William Jefferson „Bill“ Clinton

"On a metaphysical level, the State, whether real or imagined, is a faith based deity existing in the minds of its believers, generally based on a combination of the adoration of a Great Man along with an illogical fear of a Bogeyman in conjunction with an unblinking faith in the political process. That faith in turn relies on a dramatic opera-like performance on the part of politicians as they attempt to appear relevant, while the shadow government of bureaucrats and corporate/banking puppet masters attempts to remain unseen. All the while the State struggles to provide services it claims the monopolistic right to provide, while miserably failing at providing those services. On the occasion that the State's true nature is revealed and its failures exposed, it always responds by sending in waves of lies by actors on all levels, while systematically discrediting, beating down, or murdering anyone who shines the light on those failures.

The State relies on an incredibly delicate balancing act between the disinterest of its victims, the imagery of a functioning political process, and faith in government-lead progress toward some mythical idea of a better tomorrow, in contrast with the reality of a non-functional puppet political process and an ever growing ever consuming Beast, driving humanity toward world-wide slavery at best, and species wide destruction as a very real possibility."

Ben Stone

"The state is an institution run by gangs consisting of murderers, looters, and thieves, surrounded by compliant henchmen, propagandists, sycophants, crooks, liars, clowns, charlatans, charmers, and useful idiots—an institution that dirties and obscures everything it touches."

Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"Do you want totalitarian states for the rest of your life and that of your children in order to combat a virus that, even after two years, has not managed to significantly reduce the number of people on Earth? This virus will not disappear! We have to live with it! We must now decide whether we want to do so in freedom or slavery! In peace and prosperity or in war and poverty!"

Antoine Richard

"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure."

Robert LeFevre

"The similarity is astonishing, what can be collectively enforced in the name of ‘the good of the people’, formerly under socialism and now under capitalism, in such a small circle! I don't even want to say it out loud, but a little devil on my shoulder whispers almost mischievously in my ear – ‘Welcome back to the GDR’."

Katarina Witt

"The threat to freedom in Germany does not come with violence and noise, but rather quietly. It comes with all sorts of justifications, often well-intentioned ones. For example, when it comes to civil rights. In times when we are all concerned about the threat of terrorism, when we all naturally have to do everything we can for our citizens so that they can live happy lives unharmed. In times like these, parties and politicians come along and say, 'Now is the time to once again gradually reduce civil rights, which always bother us a little anyway. Freedom always dies inch by inch, as Karl Herrman Flach once put it. And freedom does not die because of politicians, it does not die because politicians want to restrict civil rights and liberties, but rather it becomes dangerous for freedom when citizens forget their own immune system, which must arm them against any threat to freedom. And for me, that is the decisive self-image of our party. That we say: For us, the citizen comes first and then the state. Other parties trust the state first and only then trust the citizens. Under the pretext of creating security, every civil right can be called into question. Under the pretext that security requires it, every tightening of the law can be decided. We fight this wherever we can, in the federal government, in parliament, but ladies and gentlemen, we also need the citizens. We also need self-confident citizens who do not accept the statement: “If you have nothing to hide, you should not complain.” No, we want a nation of self-confident citizens, not subjects of the state."

Guido Westerwelle

"It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles."

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.