Quotes

[Be Like Water]

I was disappointed to learn half the people I know are under average, but the other half more than make up for it - original

 

[Laura]

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." -- Richard Salent, Former President CBS News.

"News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising". --- former NBC news President Rubin Frank


"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. ...Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . (was) worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.” -- Excerpted From Milton Mayer’s book, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)


“We have, as far as possible, closed every avenue by which light may enter their (the slaves) minds. If we could extinguish the capacity to see the light, our work would be complete; --Virginia House of Delegates 1832


“Real power is achieved when the ruling class controls the material essentials of life, granting and withholding them from the masses as if they were privileges” ~ George Orwell

“In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all, security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished most was freedom of responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." – Sir Edward Gibbon


"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude." -- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

"You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon [Philippines]... because there isn't anybody there to rebel. That country was marched over and cleared out.... The good lord in Heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under the ground; our soldiers took no prisoners; they kept no records; they simply swept the country and wherever or however they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him."-- A Republican member of Congress in an eyewitness report on the US invasion of the Philippines, 1899

"War is a racket!... we are gangsters for wall street… And those who profit from war by risking the funds, lives and limbs of others can indeed be classified as "racketeers!" -- Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler who said that the army were gangsters for Wall Streeters. Read about how General Butler stopped a fascist coup in 1934 by Wall Streeters including Bush Senior’s Father Prescott & Friends. http://www.clubhousewreckards.com/plot/plottoseizethewhitehouse.htm

"We Now Have A Total Gangster Government…an Imperial Presidency"… “Now we’ve moved into the realm of gangster government. We have gangster government when the Federal Government has set up a new cartel and private businesses now have to go begging with their hand out to their local hopefully well politically connected Congressman or their Senator so they can buy a peace offering for that local business. Is that the kind of country we are going to have in the future?” -- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) speaking on the House floor, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thR-lVuztIY&feature=related

 

[Zadig]

-People can be divided into three groups: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.
Nicholas Murray Butler

 

[Joe]

All can say no, nobody can say yes. Th'one (sic) that (sic) has the smallest power can prevent a small thing from being done, but the one that has the biggest power can't allow a small thing to be done.

The power to say no, in fact, doesn't ex... does exist, and the power to say yes, no, because each power… balances the other one in an overall movement of paralysis.

Nicolas Sarkozy during a speech in a special care unit, explaining his future policy for... mental hospitals.

ol Sarko's startin to sound more like Bush or Rumsfeld every day!

 

[Bo]

It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we don't have enough personal power the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and it won't make a damn bit of difference.
Don Juan (Carlos Castaneda)

 

[Laura]

To sum up, I should like to say that it seems that there must be very deep connections between soul and matter and, hence, between the physics and the psychology of the future, which are not yet conceptually expressed in modern science. [–––] Such deep connections must surely exist, because otherwise the human mind would not be able to discover concepts which fit nature at all.
Pauli to Ralph König, 10 Mar. 1946.

 

[Mountain Crown]

[quote author=Perceval]ol Sarko's startin to sound more like Bush or Rumsfeld every day![/quote]

It's interesting that Sarkozy, (of Hungarian descent) is pronounced Sharkozy in Hungarian!

 

[Joe]

This is from the first page of the introduction of William Blum's "Rogue State", where he had just mentioned the manipulation that was the "Cold War":

"It was the cleverest protection racket since men convinced women that they needed men to protect them, for if all the men vanished overnight, how many women would be afraid to walk the streets?"

 

[Zadius Sky]

In this age, when it is said of a man, "He knows how to live," it may be implied he is not very honest.

Fear: A club used by priests, presidents, kings and policemen to keep the people from recovering stolen goods.

The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.

 

[Mountain Crown]

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Leonardo da Vinci

 

[TheSpoon]

[quote author=mother teresa]
These are a few of the ways we can practice humility: speak as little as possible of oneself. mind one's own business. avoid curiosity. do not want to manage other people's affairs. accept contradiction and correction cheerfully. pass over mistakes of others. accept blame when innocent. yield to the will of others. accept insults and injuries. accept being slighted, forgotten, and disliked. be kind and gentle even under provocation. do not seek to be specially loved and admired. never stand on one's dignity. yield in discussion even though one is right. choose always the hardest.[/quote]

 

[Ryan]

The concept that most people find so difficult to even entertain is that their "leaders" could or would ever lie to them. It seems that their whole comfortable world view depends entirely on the morality of their elected officials. Perhaps at some level they are aware of how vulnerable they are, of just how much free will they have all given up, and the idea that they might have given it up to a psychopath that would snuff out their lives without thinking twice if the need arose secretly terrifies them. As such they have no choice but to argue to the last that "they wouldn't do that" regardless of the clear and mounting evidence that they would and have done "that" and are planning to do it again very soon.

Returning from Chicago to New York, we gave a last demonstration in Carnegie Hall in the beginning of April, 1924.
"There were a lot of people. Mr de Hartmann and Mr Ferapontoff translated what Mr Gurdjieff said in Russian, and Mr Orage relayed it to the audience.
After the demonstration I said to Mr Gurdjieff, "I looked out at the audience and saw that half the people were not even looking interested, and looked quite asleep. Why do you allow all these people? Wouldn't it be better to have fewer people, who ARE interested?"
Mr Gurdjieff answered me, this time even a little bit angrily, "How can you judge? Perhaps for those who seem asleep today, in twenty years something will be awakened in them, and those who now seem so eager will forget in ten days. We have to let everyone hear, and the result does not belong to us."

 

[Mountain Crown]

From the Apology of Socrates

I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. . .

-if you say to me, Socrates, this time we we will not mind Anytus, and will let you off, but upon one condition, that you are not to inquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing this again you shall die—if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command of God, as I would have you know; and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the State than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.

 

[Beau]

Do not argue with idiots. They will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

- Fortune cookie

 

[gotogo]

I Dream'd in a Dream

I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dream'd that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.

from Whitman 'Leaves of Grass'.
A song for Creating a New World.