Quotes to ponder

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Tue, 9 Nov 2004 19:36:50 -0500

Subject:FW: Quotes to ponder

 

 

 

 

" The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty

to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will

preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has

been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national

morality, and the family as the basis of national life. " Adolph

Hitler, My New World Order, Proclamation to the German Nation at

Berlin, February 1, 1933

 

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an

energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average

share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to

fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on

the one hand and terrorism on the other. (Bertrand Russell: Freedom,

Harcourt Brace, 1940)

 

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is

far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your Honor.

That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in

America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed

at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way

to the poorhouse: Mark Twain.

 

" In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the

protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our

democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The

Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press

would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was

protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform

the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose

deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a

free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from

deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of

foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. " Justice Black. NYT v. US.

403 US 713

 

 

We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander

to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a

plutocracy: a government by the wealthy. " : Ramsey Clark, former U.S.

Attorney General

 

" Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is

the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy " : John Pierpont

Morgan

 

" I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed

corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a

trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. " :

Thomas Jefferson

 

" I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and

causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the

war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high

places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour

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. " : Abraham Lincoln

 

" The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial

element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S.

since the days of Andrew Jackson. " : Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is

a merger of State and corporate power. " : Benito Mussolini

 

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer

and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring

lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?: Kahlil Gibran

 

Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the

government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three

different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the

conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow

them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular

tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep

the country friendly to the conqueror: Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

 

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation,

nor does truth become error because nobody sees it: Mohandas Gandhi

 

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have

acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the

silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made

it possible for evil to triumph: Haile Selassie

 

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth: Adolf Hitler

 

When even one American-who has done nothing wrong-is forced by fear to

shut his mind and close his mouth-then all Americans are in peril:

Harry S. Truman

 

" Individuals have international duties which transcend the national

obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the

duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and

humanity from occurring. " : The Nuremberg Tribunal 1945-1946.

 

" ... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel

but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights:

one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other

of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency

specialists.

Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations

with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to

sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and

economic interests are still protected in secret. " : Robert Parry,

investigative reporter and author

 

" The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance,

but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life

.... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its

successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the

hierarchical structure remains always the same. " : George Orwell, 1984

 

" Our rulers make the news, but they do not appear in the news, not as

they really are-not as a political class, a governing establishment, a

body of leaders with great and pervasive powers, with deep, often

dark, ambitions.

In the American republic the fact of oligarchy is the most dreaded

knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us. By their

subjugation of the press, the political powers in America have

conferred on themselves the greatest of political blessings-Gyges'

ring of invisibility. And they have left the American people more

deeply baffled by their own country's politics than any people on

earth. Our public realm lies steeped in twilight, and we call that

twilight news. " : Walter Karp

 

God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and

unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany.

Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler

 

" Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come

through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact,

was false. " : Bertrand Russell

 

Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the

source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility

to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit

natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred. - Bertrand Russell,

Unpopular essays

 

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the

liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of

a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private

power to a point where it becomes stronger than the 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.

(FDR: message to Congress proposing the monopoly investigation, 1938)

 

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 so credulous: Carl Sagan

 

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a

statistic: Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945