| Quotes

 “Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat” ~ (Horace, Satires)  

 “What prevents me from speaking the truth with a smile?”

| Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the Truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth

“If Big Brother (of Orwell’s 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed.” ~ Michael Parenti – (1933- ) – Source: “Inventing Reality” (1986)

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” ~ T.S. Eliot

 “We have shamefully abdicated to the media our democratic responsibility to guide our politicians. They’re telling us what’s pertinent; they’re choosing the issues. What can you do to change this? Well, the media reports on what’s hot, what they think people are interested in. […] Let’s say, for example, each day this month you emailed your local media outlet and asked them to tell you what was going on concerning ___. At the end of that month, they would have received thirty emails. If everyone in the country did this, at the end of the month they would be inundated with ___ emails. If everyone in France, Japan and Australia did this as well, in one month 7,291,402,320 emails would have been sent – and the Western media would surely have begun reporting on ___.”
~ Roméo Dallaire in his book “They fight like soldiers, they die like children” (p.261)

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes her laws” ~ Meyer Rothschild (1790)

“Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

“There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.” ~ Robert G. Ingersoll, (1833-1899) American political leader, orator

“There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also the greatest threat to all global power structures: the ‘global political awakening.’ ~ Andrew Gavin Marshall

‘Terrorism and precipitate responses to it almost always produce the opposite of what is intended.’ —Robert W. Funk

“Across the [Middle East], an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests,” Noam Chomsky says. “The reason is very simple… Plainly, the U.S. and its allies are not going to want governments which are responsive to the will of the people. If that happens, not only will the U.S. not control the region, but it will be thrown out.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/11/noam_chomsky_the_us_and_its

“The greatest injustice is using the law to keep justice at bay.” ~ Scott Adams (Cartoonist – paraphrased from a comment made in his April 11, 2010 Dilbert cartoon strip)

“I have pondered much on the nature of Truth, my way having lain in courts of justice, where men deal in an inferior substitute called “evidence.” ~ A. Lieck, ‘Narrow Waters’ [1937]

“I do think we’ll look back on it [as] a period of horrible shame and regret for how we treated people, how we disobeyed our own law and international law.” ~ Barbara Olshansky

“In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest”. ~ J. William Fulbright

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. Because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” ~ Frantz Fanon ~ {July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961} French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer, published “Black Skin, White masks” at the age of 27.

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein

“We cannot be BOTH the World’s leading Champion of Peace and the World’s leading Supplier of the Weapons of War!” – US President Jimmy Carter

“When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“The Soviet intervention was a golden opportunity for the CIA to transform the tribal resistance into a holy war, an Islamic jihad to expel the godless communists from Afghanistan. Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied, and trained almost 100,000 radical Mujahideen from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was Saudi-born millionaire right-winger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts” ~ [2009] Afghanistan, “Another Untold Story” by Dr. Michael Parenti

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” — Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice from 1916–1939

“There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.” – John F. Kennedy

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other,to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” – Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist”

“I’m not anti-American, America is anti-me” – British hip-hop star LowKey

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – You may know that your society is doomed.” — Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”, 1957

“When the power of Love will overcome the love of Power, the world will know Peace” – Jimi Hendrix

“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” – Henry David Thoreau

“The only way to deal with an unfree world, is to become absolutely free, that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus

“There is no Left or Right — there is only freedom or tyranny. Everything else is an illusion, an obfuscation to keep you confused and silent as the world burns around you.” – Philip Brennan

“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” – Cornelius Tacitus (55 – 117 A.D.)

“One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Krishnamurti

“We are fast approaching the stage of ultimate inversion: the stage where government is free to do as it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” – Ayn Rand

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” – Samuel Adams

“Is everything a conspiracy? No, just the important stuff.” – Jeff Wells, Rigorous Intuition

“If you’re not catching flak, you’re not over the target.” – U.S. Air Force

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lila Watson

“The more you know, the less you need.” – Cody Lundin

“Rise like Lions after slumber; In unvanquishable number; Shake your chains to earth like dew; Which in sleep had fallen on you; Ye are many; They are few.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy

“There is no path to peace; peace is the path.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Remarkably virtually everyone in developed countries desperately tries to believe that they are immune to indoctrination. They think for themselves and readily know the difference between truth and falsity, fantasy and reality, superstition and science, fact and fiction. Technologically sophisticated cultures are conditioned to accept belief systems, behaviors, and values that would have been rejected out of hand by their stone-age predecessors. Primitives would instantly sense the obvious threats to survival and adjustment, or simple nonsense, inherent in many of the treasured beliefs of modern society.” – Wilson Bryan Key, The Age of Manipulation

“Boredom, anxiety, rejection, fear, envy, sloth — in TV commercials there are remedies for each of these, and more. The remedies are called Scope, Comet, Toyota, Bufferin, Alka-Seltzer, and Budweiser. They take the place of good works, restraint, piety, awe, humility, and transcendence.” – Neil Postman, How to Watch TV News

“Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them — and then, the opportunity to choose.” – C. Wright Mills

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” – Mark Twain

“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.” – John Lennon

“In the 24 hours since this time yesterday, over 200,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed in our world. Fully 13 million tons of toxic chemicals have been released into our environment. Over 45,000 people have died from starvation, 38,000 of them children. And more than 130 plant and animal species have been driven to extinction by the actions of humans. And all this just since yesterday.” – Thom Hartmann

“Our great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of our nation, therefore, and all of our activities are in the hands of a few men…who necessarily, by very reason of their limitations, chill and check and destroy economic freedom.” – Woodrow Wilson

“Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it.” – Ben Franklin

“Absolute certainty is a privilege of uneducated minds and fanatics.” – C.J. Keyser

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.” – Robert F. Kennedy “It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he descended from man.” – H. L. Mencken

The world we live in: “Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religion destroys spirituality.” – Michael Ellner

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” – Gandhi

“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness.” – James Thurber

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” – Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 19, 1787

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered . . . I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?” – Gandhi

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.” – Thomas Jefferson

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” – Thomas Jefferson

“A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.” – Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792

“The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” – Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World

“Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” – William Blum

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” – William Colby, former Director of the CIA (2004)

“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” – Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the Nazi Regime

“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” – Albert Einstein

“The jaws of power are always open to devour.” – John Adams “Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty.” – John Adams

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato

“There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part. You have to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who own it, to the people who run it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” – Mario Savio

“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.” – Mark Twain

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” – Steven Weinberg

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” John Adams 2nd U.S. President

======

 “In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told.” – Amilcar Cabral

“What’s wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence… I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.” – Marian Wright Edleman –

“There are men – now in power in this country – who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit”: John Lindsay

“We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest — which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves.” – Thomas Jefferson

If you like our work and wish to support it click here: