Tyranny Quotes – Reflections on Power and Authority

"The system absorbs those who think they can utilize it. Nor can there be any question of finding a modus vivendi or achieving attenuations. It has been demonstrated how the liberal state becomes an authoritarian state. The course is set and no accommodation will be either lasting or sufficient. In face of this absolute power, only an absolutely negative position is viable. What we have in mind is the attitude that conscientous objectors take on a specific point, and not without good reason. In the present set-up the anarchist attitude of a total refusal of validity or legitimacy to any authority of any kind seems to me to be the only valid and viable one. The point is not to enforce a particular view of society but to establish a counterbalance, a protest, a sign of cleavage. In face of an absolute power only a total confrontation has any meaning."

Jacques Ellul

"Culture teaches that only “nuts” and “crazies” challenge authority. Law is the holiest and most sacred emblem of culture.

Insanity is not an inability to perceive reality; it is a willing rejection of reality in favor of the artificial constructs of tyranny. Law threatens violence upon all who refuse to obey it. When you chose to act upon an artificial view of reality, you are insane. People obey law out of fear of death, until they can be properly cultured to accept the rule of law without question. Cultural indoctrination is insanity. The definition of insanity is blind obedience.

It is insane to believe that those in power over people rightfully belong there. It is insane to assume that they will always be there. It is insane to believe that law has the right to command the obedience of people. The culture of royalty, the culture of patriotism and the culture of law are all insanity.
No human being who understands the fullness of their own worth would ever accept the notion that someone ought to rule over them. It is the function of culture to blind the eyes of people to their own worth, and to deafen their ears to any speech that may teach them. When cultural influence is at its peak, insanity ravages the mind. Obedience is the object of authority, and authority wants no possibility of rebellion. The definition of insanity is blind obedience."

Jeremy Locke

"A people that is governed by a power must know the power by which it is governed. The people must direct and control that power. They must step in when it commits crimes; otherwise, the people become accomplices. The foundation of democracy is popular sovereignty, not the authority of a paternalistic state. It is not the citizen who stands in a relationship of obedience to the government; rather, the government is accountable to the citizen for its actions within the framework of the law. The citizen has the right and the duty to call the government to order if he believes that democratic rights are being violated."

Dr. Gustav Heinemann

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin... Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... Take this great power away from them and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in... But, if you want to continue to be a slave of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit."

Sir Josiah Stamp

"If you want to remain a slave to the banks and want them to pay the cost of your own slavery, then let them continue the issue of currency control and regulate the money supply of the nation."

Sir Josiah Stamp

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!"

Mayer Amschel Rothschild

"I have [...] the impression that most politicians are still not aware just how much they are controlled today by the financial markets, indeed that they are ruled by them."

Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Hans Tietmeyer

"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom."

Woodrow Wilson

"Narrow-mindedness as raison d’état. Whether compulsory vaccination, the energy transition, or socio-political coercive measures: in Germany, there is a dogged insistence on every course once chosen, even when it has long since been disproven by reality. One cause is the prevailing cult of consensus, which treats any intellectual flexibility with suspicion. Thus, a fatal bunker mentality has emerged."

Alexander Grau

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

Woodrow Wilson

"Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

Albert Einstein

"This is why you have labels for anyone expressing skepticism of establishment narratives like “conspiracy theorist”, “useful idiot”, “Russian asset” or “Assadist”; the powerful people who understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world need labels to separate the faithful from the heathens. It means the same thing as “heretic”."

Caitlin Johnstone

"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people."

Friedrich August von Hayek

"I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

Henry David Thoreau

"People have no idea how many constraints there are in politics. Politicians are, to some extent, governed by processes, events, and procedures beyond their control. You are not all-powerful—at times, you are simply powerless."

Peter Tauber

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

George Orwell