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“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor — he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation — he works secretly and unknown to undermine the pillars of a city — he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.” -- Cicero, 42 B.C.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been fooled.” -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" (February 1, 1987)
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." -- H.L. Mencken
“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. Because they control the minds of the masses, they have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power… If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
"The lowest standards of ethics of which a right-thinking man can possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to shoot his fellow men. In youth he may have learned the command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters manhood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through his neighbor's heart - and this, unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred, and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his ruler gives the word." -- Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil
“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." -- Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906.
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to their plans." -- Hermann Hesse
"It is very difficult, and perhaps entirely impossible, to combat the effects of brain-washing by argument." -- Paul Feyerabend
"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." -- Søren Kierkegaard
“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” -- Mark Twain
"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth ... Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." -- Patrick Henry, Virginia Convention, 23 March, 1775)
"Fascism is a system of government in which there is no separation of powers and the Executive is in control of all branches of the State apparatus, including the judiciary. It is designed to maintain and expand the power of the State for the benefit of a capitalist ruling class. Fascism is characterized by the use of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, in various proportions, as well as force and terror, to maintain its control. The State may have a single charismatic leader. There may be a single national ideology supported by law, but if not, certain ideologies are banned by law, and certain religious/non-religious views are criminalized. There are no independent media." - Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
“A politico-economic system in which the Executive Branch of the Government: regards the Constitution as in place only on paper; demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to its policies and programs; redefines the words "truth," "science," "data," "fact," and "reality" through the use of the Big Lie technique; regularly uses the Doctrine of White Supremacy/racism, xenophobia in general and Islamophobia in particular, and homophobia to achieve political ends; suppresses of the free vote by challenging the legitimacy of the electoral system; casts "the media" as a principal enemy, with the aim of suppressing dissent and promoting distrust in it and its reporting; all in service of the economically dominant sector of the capitalist ruling class: manufacturing, fossil fuels, agriculture/food, pharma/health services, retail, transportation, banking/investment/financial services.” – Steven Jonas, MD, MPH (Ret.), Deputy Editor for The Greanville Post
“Unlike traditional liberalism and conservatism, neoliberalism and neoconservatism are not opposites. Neoliberalism is just another name for transnational globalization, while neoconservatism is nothing other than the U.S.-dominated global empire project. They work together, two inhuman, anti-human processes that ensure a tiny minority of people control and own all the water, minerals, drugs, GM foods, and everything else worth owning in this world.” – Richard Dolan
From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” -- President Theodore Roosevelt
“The problem of fake news isn’t solved by hoping for a referee. But rather because we as participants — we as citizens, we as users of these services — help each other. We talk, and we share, and we point out what is fake, we point out what is true. The answer to bad speech is not censorship. The answer to bad speech is more speech. We have to spread the idea that critical thinking matters now more than ever.” -- Edward Snowden
"You don't fight Nazis because you expect to win, you fight Nazis because they're Nazis." -- Chris Hedges
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian philosopher
“If I don’t exaggerate no one will listen. You have to make outrageous statements but with the warning to your listeners that you’re only doing it for effect, to get your point across, to provoke thought.” – Alan Watts
A definition of fascism-in-the-21st century, on the Trumpian model:
"The position of the Department of the Army is that the publication of those photographs will be considered to be prejudicial to the rights of individuals either charged or to be charged with illegal conduct in connection with the alleged murders, whether or not the photographs actually do portray scenes relative to the present inquiry. The Army trusts that The Plain Dealer will refrain from publication of material that will prejudice the administration of justice. The Army is prohibited by fair trial considerations from commenting on whether any items including photographs might possibly be evidence." -- Col. Robert M. Lathrop, staff judge advocate, U.S. Army, Ft. Benning, Ga, when the army found out that the newspaper planned to publish the My Lai Massacre photos.
“The news media is full of propaganda, due to the corrupting influence of huge corporations that own them or advertise on them. The overall agenda is to convince the audience to be in favor of and vote for their own victimization and abuse, willingly and voluntarily.” –
“The majority of the human population has allowed itself to be deceived through ignorance, deception, stupidity, chronic apathy or a serious lack of curiosity and questioning, all somewhat bolstered by cynicism. Consumerism rules; as long as their bellies are full and heads filled with mindless entertainment or other gratuitous distraction, they’re happy. Genetic cloning is unnecessary. Cloning has already been done care of the effects of mass media brainwashing.” – Paul A. Philips
“The mass media has been and still is a useful tool for the controllers in holding back opportunity for real human growth and development. It has become a massive dam of lies and cover-ups; holding back a wealth of knowledge for raising conscious awareness, self-sufficiency and unity for the human race.” – Paul A Philips
“An ignorant population does not look to see the greater way, never questions authorities or understand rights and therefore provides little opposition to a dictatorship. If we want to grow as a race we must start educating ourselves. Be able to learn to discern. Recognize when the media is trying to manipulate us. Whatever it is we’re subjected to in the media, beware of the hidden ulterior motive. Perhaps it would be better to boycott this propagandist pap altogether and instead of being listless or unresponsive, do something worth-while; campaign for the truth.” -- Paul A. Philips
”The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform…has altered under commercial pressure, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain” -- Tom Stoppard
“We have come to a point where it is loyalty to resist, and treason to submit.” – Carl Schurz German-born General in the Civil War
“It is easier to convince a person of a lie than to convince a person that they have been lied to.” -- Mark Twain
”The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who during time of great moral crisis maintained their neutrality.” -- Dante
“It is forbidden to kill, therefore all murderers are punished - unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” -- Voltaire
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
—Voltaire
"It's dangerous to be right when the government's wrong." -- Voltaire
“Shamefully, the decaying Democratic Party works to block millions of voters from having a choice of progressive third-party candidates. No country in the Western world places more obstacles to third-party and independent candidates getting on the ballot than the United States. Democrats and Republicans built this exclusionary duopoly. As a result, major redirections and reforms, often supported by a popular majority, are excluded from electoral arenas. Without a competitive democracy, our political system cannot attract better candidates. A political monoculture with safe, gerrymandered incumbents serving myopic commercial interests is systematically undemocratic. It helps explain why the Democratic Party has been unable to defend this country from the worst Republican Party in history at the congressional and state levels.”– Ralph Nader
“Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, courage over fear, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.” -- Anthony J. Marsella, PhD
"It seems to me that the tellers of unwelcome truths (the poets, the prophets, the whistle-blowers and the vocal, knowledgeable exposers of conspiracies) are dealt with in six ways:
1) First, they are ignored; 2) Second, they are ridiculed; 3) Third, they are threatened with ostracization, persecution, imprisonment or execution; 4) Fourth, they are ostracized, persecuted, imprisoned, disappeared, suicided or otherwise executed (physically, psychologically or spiritually); 5) Fifth, their truths may eventually be accepted as self-evident; 6) And then, Sixth (and scandalously) the truths of these courageous prophets are then co-opted by the old lie-tellers, persecutors and detractors (namely, the politically powerful, the tyrants, the police state, the wealthy elite and/or the ruthless, amoral corporate powers) who then may build statues (and even declare federal holidays) to honor the name of the then safely dead truth-teller."-- Gary G. Kohls, MD, amateur philosopher, “plagiarizing” the famous German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who famously proclaimed: "All great truth is dealt with in three ways: First it is ridiculed; then it is violently opposed; and finally it is accepted as self-evident."
“It takes only one man to commit a crime but an entire community to conceal it”-- Krishnamurti
“That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other… Anything different—that's what they're gonna talk about—race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank!” -- George Carlin, Comedian
“Are you a communist?"
"No I am an anti-fascist"
"For a long time?"
"Since I have understood fascism.”
-- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a televised speech 1961
"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace - more about killing than we do about living." -- WWII General Omar Bradley
"I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell." -- General William Tecumseh Sherman
“Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer.” -- George Orwell, Fighting in Spain
“It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.” -- Noam Chomsky
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” -- Sinclair Lewis
“Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.” -- Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
“The ends justify the means mindset has been the impetus behind many a cruel medical or social experiment.” -- James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
“Nazi ideologies continue to the present day behind the veil of supposedly free societies and governments.” -- James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies
“The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.
These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.
While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.”
― Julian Assange, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
“The term "political correctness" has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's "Thought Police" and fascist regimes.” ― Helmut Newton
”The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.
“They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.” ― Henry A. Wallace
“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.” ― Henry A. Wallace
“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.” ― Henry A. Wallace
“Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle.” -- Woody Allen
“Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity.” -- The judges at the Nuremberg trials that condemned Nazi war criminals
“I do not agree with your presumption that Popes and Kings cannot be judged like other men, or are incapable of wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against holders of power … There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Historic responsibility must therefore make up for the want of legal responsibility.”-- Lord Acton, 1887
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“The most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”
-- John F. Kennedy, American University commencement address, Washington, 10 June 1963. (Five months later Kennedy was assassinated.)
"The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." -- MohandasGandhi
"Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
”In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.“ -- George Orwell
"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."-- George Orwell
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness... What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction...And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." -- Howard Zinn
“Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.”--Mikhail Gorbachev
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
--Edmund Burke (British Statesman and Philosopher, 1729-1797)
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”– Abraham Lincoln
”A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
-- Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“Those who take oaths to politically powerful secret societies cannot be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic.” -- President John Quincy Adams
"The project of the conservative throughout the ages is the search for a higher moral justification for selfishness. This is still worth every word of political philosophy written since the war, as well as being a damn good explanation of why self-styled "Libertarians" and traditional conservatives stick together." -- John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and ambassador
"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. It is the ruling class that declares the wars, and it is the working class who fights all the battles and furnishes the corpses. The ruling class continually talks about “patriotic duty”, but it is not their duty but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches." -- Eugene V. Debs
“Globalization is but another name for colonization - nothing has changed but the name. And, just as the East India Company was the instrument for colonization, today's corporation is the instrument for globalization. And, corporatization is but another name for Fascism.” -- Urban Kohler
"Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander and more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." -- Emma Goldman
“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today..." --Albert Camus, a non-Christian, 1948
"They that start by burning books will end by burning men." -- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), from his play Almansor (1821)
"I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future." -- Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852
"There must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." -- Frederick Douglass 1857
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” -- Abraham Lincoln
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." -- Albert Einstein
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice...Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of country stance - how violently I hate all this; how despicable and ignoble war is...I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -- Albert Einstein
"As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced." -- Dr. Helen Caldicott
"Aggressive militarization under the rubric of defense against terrorism threatens to provoke a chain reaction among nuclear nations, big and small, that, once set in motion, may prove impossible to control. No military confrontation anywhere in the world is free from this ominous and ever-present danger." -- Helen Caldicott, The New Nuclear Danger, 2002
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.
Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."-- Robert F. Kennedy, from his speech on June 6, 1966 at the UN, exactly 2 years before his assassination.
“Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year; but that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage,… special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them,… the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl,… napalm,… nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities,… the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learnings, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country.
“It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans”. -- Robert Francis Kennedy, University of Kansas, March 18, 1968
"Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Star Wars will take money away from education, programs for women and children, and health care. There is a direct link between promoting weapons for space and the destabilization of our communities. People must connect these struggles." -- Bruce Gagnon
"In this time of war against Osama bin Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR leader isn't the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties. Amen." -- The prayer of Huey Freedman, black character in "The Boondocks" cartoon.
"The Patriot Act followed 9/11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire." -- Srdja Trifkovic
"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person." -- Anonymous
"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- President Theodore Roosevelt, (who sometimes talked like an anti-fascist, but who often acted otherwise) in an editorial for the Kansas City Star - May 7, 1918
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
”Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.” -- Arthur Miller
”Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.” -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Ours ought to be a society in which the weak are not preyed upon and the innocent have nothing to fear." -- Ruben Navarette
"Security policy" has led us into the most dire insecurity the world has ever faced. The politics of nuclear confrontation imposes a brand of insanity upon us that says, ‘In order to defend freedom, we must be prepared to destroy life itself.’ The system is bankrupt when humanity shrinks from recognizing that it is in the process of destroying itself. The enormous expenditure of energy, scientific sophistication and wealth on the military is the main cause of poverty, inflation and despair in the world." -- Petra Kelly, Fighting For Hope,1984
"We were constantly told by our friends, ‘Who were we to differ with able statesmen, with men of sensitive conscience who also absolutely abhorred war, but were convinced that this war for the preservation of democracy would make all future wars impossible, that the priceless values of civilization which were at stake could at this moment be saved only by war?’ But these very dogmatic statements spurred one to alarm. Was not war in the interest of democracy for the salvation of civilization a contradiction of terms, whoever said it or however often it was repeated?" -- Jane Addams, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Founder of Hull House; Personal Reactions During War, 1922
"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither." -- Benjamin Franklin
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." -- Thomas Jefferson, September 23, 1800, as inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial
"Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." -- Thomas Jefferson 1819
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776
"All that was required of them (i.e. the brain-washed masses) was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice." -- George Orwell, 1984
"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods." -- the prophetic words of Aldous Huxley, 1959 (author, Brave New World)
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts and who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." -- Ian Williams Goddard
"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority." -- Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority,1965
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore (individual citizens) have the duty to (refuse to obey) domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring. "-- Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal
“We're not made by God to mass kill one another, and that's backed up by the Gospels. Lying and war are always associated. Pay attention to war-makers when they try to defend their current war; if they’re moving their lips they're lying.” -- Phil Berrigan
"The poor tell us who we are,
The prophets tell us who we could be,
So we hide the poor,
And kill the prophets."
Phil Berrigan
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better." -- Daniel Berrigan
"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul." -- Gandhi
"In nonviolence, the masses have a weapon that enables a child, a woman, or even a decrepit old man to resist the mightiest government successfully. If your spirit is strong, mere lack of physical strength ceases to be a handicap." -- Gandhi
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." -- Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit
"There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social change is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the silence of the so-called good people." --Martin Luther King. Jr.
“I have learned over the years . . .that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear,
knowing what must be done does away with fear.” -- Rosa Parks
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." --Unamuno, wall grafitti from Paris, May 1968
“My kind of loyalty was to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease and death.” -- Mark Twain
"I've never killed a man, but I've read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction." -- Mark Twain
"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” -- Tacitus
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.” -- John F. Kennedy
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie— deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Silence comforts the tormenter, never the tormented." -- Elie Wiesel
“If you see injustice and say nothing, you have taken the side of the oppressor." – Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican Archbishop
"When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint, but when I ask why people should be hungry, they call me a communist." -- Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara
“Praying for peace is like praying for a weedless garden. Nothing will happen until you get your hands dirty.” -- John K. Stoner, co-founder of Every Church A Peace Church
"A country that has dangled the sword of nuclear holocaust over the world for half a century and claims that someone else invented terrorism is a country out of touch with reality." -- John K. Stoner, 2001
"You Christians have vested interests in unjust structures, that create victims, to whom you then can pour out your hearts in charity." -- Karl Marx
"Oh Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown out the thunder of guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander un-befriended the wastes of their desolated land. We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love. Amen." -- Mark Twain (THE CHRISTIAN PATRIOT'S [UNSPOKEN] PULPIT PRAYER TO "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS")
"Beginning with Constantine, Christianity triumphed at the level of the state and soon began persecutions (against the enemies of the state) similar to those in which the early Christians were victims. Like so many previous religious and political enterprises, Christianity suffered persecution while it was weak and became the persecutor as soon as it gained strength." -- Rene Girard, The Scapegoat
“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”-- Aristotle
"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." -- Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
"Military power is as corrupting to the man who possesses it as it is pitiless to its victims. Violence is just as devastating to the soul of the perpetrator as it is to the body and souls of those who are victims of it." -- American Friends (Quakers) Service Committee
“Globalization is but another name for colonization -- nothing has changed but the name. And, just as the East India Company was the instrument for colonization, today's corporation is the instrument for globalization. And, corporatization is but another name for Fascism.” -- Urban Kohler