Quotes
Quotes About Power and Democracy:
John Steinbeck:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
Fredrick Douglas:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand”
George Bernard Shaw:
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.”
George Orwell:
A hierarchal society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.
Whatever the party hold true, is true. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.
The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.
Their lives are dedicated to world conquest, but they know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly ad without victory.
One must not make martyrs…When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
[Winston to Julia]…I don’t imagine that we can alter anything in our own lifetime. But one can imagine little knots of resistance springing up here and there—small groups of people banding themselves together, and gradually growing, and even leaving a few records behind, so that the next generation can carry on where we leave off.If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
The world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on the people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was being demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did not harm them, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
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…Whatever was now true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control,’ they called it.
The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought…in the end we shall make thoughtcrime impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it…the heresy of heresies was common sense…The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears…
The object of waging war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.
Eric Hoffer:
A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion- it is an evil government.
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.
The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.
The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to an empty head.
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
Thomas Jefferson:
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
I hope we shall…crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporation, which dare already to chalenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. (1816)
Napoleon:
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
George Washington:
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
John F. Kennedy:
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
John Lennon:
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.
If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.
Imagine
Imagine there’s no heaven,
it’s easy if you try,
No hell below us,
above us only sky,
Imagine all the people,
living for today.
Imagine there’s no countries,
it isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
and no religion too,
Imagine all the people,
living life in peace.
You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope someday you’ll join us,
and the world will be as one.
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
a brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people,
sharing all the world.
You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope someday you’ll join us,
and the world will live as one.
Gandhi:
To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.
The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.
In true democracy every man and women is taught to think for himself or herself.
The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.
Jon Stewart:
The reason I don’t worry about society is, nineteen people knocked down two buildings and killed thousands. Hundreds of people ran into those buildings to save them. I’ll take those odds every f#$%ing day.
Ken Wilber:
When it comes to the cause of human suffering, liberals tend to believe in objective causation, whereas conservatives tend to believe in subjective causation. That is, if an individual is suffering, the typical liberal tends to blame objective social institutions (if you are poor it is because you are oppressed by society), whereas the typical conservative tends to blame subjective factors (if you are poor it is because you are lazy). Thus, the liberal recommends objective social interventions: redistribute the wealth, change social institutions so that they produce fairer outcomes, evenly slice the economic pie, aim for equality among all. The typical conservative recommends that we instill family values, demand that individuals assume more responsibility for themselves, tighten up slack moral standards (often by embracing traditional religious values), encourage a work ethic, reward achievement, and so on…the first step toward a Third Way that integrates the best of liberal and conservative…address both interior factors (values, meaning, morals, the development of consciousness) and exterior factors (economic conditions, material well-being, technological advance, social safety net, environment)—in short, a true Third Way would emphasize both interior development and exterior development.
Aristotle:
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
Abraham Lincoln:
Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
Other:
The highest tax bracket income earners, when compared with those people in lower tax brackets, are far more capable of changing their taxable income by hiring lawyers, accountants, deferred income specialists and the like. They can change the location, timing, composition and volume of income to avoid taxation. –Arthur Laffur (Aug, 2, 2010, Wall Street Journal)
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