“Lots of people use misleading euphemisms to make their position sound more pleasant. Socialists call themselves "democrats". Forced wealth redistribution is called "welfare". Politicians refer to their extortion as "asking" for "contributions." And so on.

In contrast the term "anarchist" and "voluntaryist" are specific and precise: "anarchist" want "rule by no one" (what the word "anarchy" literally means), and "voluntaryists" want all human interaction to be voluntary. And the "non-aggression principle" is self-explanatory.

What's funny is that those who argue AGAINST a statelelss society are often accidentally honest. If, for example, you are against anarchy, then you are a statist, and you advocate "rule by someone." If you bash "voluntaryism," then by definition you are an INvoluntaryist, meaning you want some degree of violent coercion. If you disagree with the non-aggression principle, that means you are PRO-aggression, and you want violence initiated against people who threaten or harm anyone.

It's no wonder statists love their euphemisms and vague obfuscations. If they are simply specific and honest about what they believe, and what they advocate, they've already lost the debate.”
	— Larken Rose (1968–)
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% #violent #violence
“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

There is seldom, if ever, any evidence that the new government proposed would be any better than the old one. On the contrary, all the historical testimony runs the other way. Political revolutions do not often accomplish anything of genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course, the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that they have achieved great things, and usually they hang any man who denies it.”
	— H.L. Mencken (1880–1956), 'Smart Set' (December 1919), and 'Le Contrat Social' (1922)
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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
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.
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”
	— H.L. Mencken (1880–1956), 'Smart Set' (December 1919), and 'Le Contrat Social' (1922)
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“Violent revolutions, like the state, place the initiation of violence at the center of their moral universe. The rebels believe it is morally justifiable to initiate violence to accomplish their goals. Therefore, the victor in that revolution is of little consequence because society will still be ruled by those who grant moral sanction to the initiation of violence to impose their will on others.

Violent revolution is akin to changing lanes on the highway, or even changing to a different car. It may seem different for a bit, but you're still heading in the same direction. You won't see real change toward a free society until you get off the goddamn highway of violence and embrace the non-aggression principle.”
	― Joseph Moutard
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“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
	— Hermann Göring (1893–1946)
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“In [totalitarianism] shortages of material goods, even of necessities, were not a drawback but a great advantage for the rulers. These shortages were not accidental to the terror, but one of its most powerful instruments. Not only did shortages keep people’s minds strictly on bread and sausage, and divert their energies to procuring them so that there was no time or inclination left over for subversion, but the shortages meant that people could be brought to inform, spy and betray each other very cheaply...”
	— Theodore Dalrymple (1893–1946), 'The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World'
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% #state #mass psychosis
“The State has taken the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. 

But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevailing trend towards mass-mindedness. 

The result, as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition. 

Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest. The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honored as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other.

It is sacrosanct and above criticism. 

Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.”
	— Carl Jung (1875–1961), 'The Undiscovered Self'
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% #city #urban #degradation
% TODO clean this up based on the book
“Nevertheless, it should be clear to everyone that such a state of degradation can come about only under certain conditions. The most important of these is the accumulation of Urban, industrialized masses — of people torn from the soil, engaged in one-sided employment, and lacking every healthy instinct, even that of self-preservation. Loss of the instinct of self-preservation can be measured in terms of dependence on the state… . Dependence on the State means that everybody relies on everybody else (=State) instead of on himself. Every man hangs on to the next and enjoys a false feeling of security, for one is still hanging in the air even when hanging in the company of ten thousand other people. The only difference is that one is no longer aware of one's own insecurity. The increasing dependence on the State is anything but a healthy symptom; it means that the whole nation is in a fair way to becoming a herd of sheep, constantly relying on a shepherd to drive them into good pastures. […] The steady growth of the Welfare State is no doubt a very fine thing from one point of view, but from another it is a doubtful blessing, as it robs people of their individual responsibility and turns them into infants and sheep. […] once a man is cut off from the nourishing roots of instinct, he becomes the shuttle-cock of every wind that blows. He is then no better than a sick animal, demoralized and degenerate, and nothing short of a catastrophe can bring him back to health.”
	— Carl Jung (1875–1961), 'Civilization in transition'
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% #master
“But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple. […] The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semi-divine being. […] Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement. […] Just as the prophet is a primordial image from the collective psyche, so also is the disciple of the prophet.”
	— Carl Jung (1875–1961), 1953, 7:263-265
% https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/60929q/jung_quotes_on_ego_inflation/
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“It cannot be too firmly realized that war is a function of States and not of nations. Indeed, that it is the chief function of States. War is a very artificial thing. It is not the naïve spontaneous outburst of herd pugnacity; it is no more primary than is formal religion. War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization. War has an immemorial tradition and heredity only because the State has a long tradition and heredity. But they are inseparably and functionally joined. We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure that this war is a war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form.”
	— Randolph Bourne (1886–1918), 'The State'
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“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
	— Arundhati Roy (1961–), 'War Talk'
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“The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money. No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.”
	— H.L. Mencken (1880–1956)
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“If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.”
	— Gary Allen (1936–1986)
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“Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.”
	— Thomas Paine (1737–1809), 'The Rights of Man' (1792)
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“Why a person should be a Libertarian? Not as an intellectual parlor game, not from the utilitarian weighing of costs and benefits, and not because there will be X percent more bathtubs produced in the free society. The basic reason for one’s libertarianism should be a passion for justice, for sweeping away as quickly as possible the tyranny, the thievery, the mass murder, and enslavement, which statism has, for too long, imposed upon mankind.”
	— Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995)
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“It is evident that the common enthusiasm for equality is, in the fundamental sense, anti-human. It tends to repress the flowering of individual personality and diversity, and civilization itself; it is a drive toward savage uniformity. Since abilities and interests are naturally diverse, a drive toward making people equal in all or most respects is necessarily a leveling downward. It is a drive against the development of talent, genius, variety, and reasoning power. Since it negates the very principles of human life and human growth, the creed of equality and uniformity is a creed of death and destruction.”
	— Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995)
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“The libertarian is also eminently realistic because he alone understands fully the nature of the State and its thrust for power. In contrast, it is the seemingly far more realistic conservative believer in "limited government" who is the truly impractical Utopian. This conservative keeps repeating the litany that the central government should be severely limited by a constitution. Yet, at the same time he rails against the corruption of the original Constitution and the widening of federal power since 1789, the conservative fails to draw the proper lesson from that degeneration. The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and THEN says, "Limit yourself"; it is HE who is truly the impractical utopian.”
	— Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995), 'For a New Liberty'
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“"Anarchy" is an expression of social behavior that reflects the individualized nature of life. Only as living beings are free to pursue their particular interests in the unique circumstances in which they find themselves, can conditions for the well-being of all be attained. Anarchy presumes decentralized and cooperative systems that serve the mutual interests of the individuals comprising them, without the systems ever becoming their own reasons for being. It is this thinking, and the practices that result therefrom, that is alone responsible for whatever peace and order exists in society.

Political thinking, by contrast, presumes the supremacy of the systems (i.e., the state) and reduces individuals to the status of resources for the accomplishment of their ends. Such systems are grounded in the mass-minded conditioning and behavior that has produced the deadly wars, economic dislocations, genocides, and police-state oppressions that comprise the essence of political history.”
	— Butler Shaffer
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“Anarchism is not an ideological movement. It is an ideological statement. It says that all people have the capacity for liberty. It says that all anarchists want liberty. And then it is silent. After the pause of that silence, anarchists then mount the stages of their own communities and history and proclaim their, not anarchism’s ideologies - they say how they, how they as anarchists, will make arrangements, describe events, celebrate life and work.

Anarchism is the hammer-idea, smashing the chains. Liberty is what results and, in liberty, everything else is up to the people and their ideologies. It is not up to THE ideology. Anarchism says, in effect, there is no such upper case, dominating ideology.”
	― Karl Hess (1923–1994), Anarchism without Hyphens (1980), http://www.panarchy.org/hess/anarchism.html
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“It is the formula of a crude individualism, of an innate selfishness; I do not at all deny that; I confess it, place it on record and exult in it. If there is anyone who might feel himself harmed by it and would chastise me for it, bring him before me so that I may question him. Does my selfishness do you some harm? if you say no, you have no grounds for objection, because I am at liberty in respect of anything not likely to do you harm. If you say yes, you are cheats, because my selfishness is nothing more than my assertion of self-ownership, an appeal to my identity, a protest against all overlordship. If you feel harmed by the carrying out of this act of self-possession, by my assertion of rights over my own person — which is to say, over the least questionable of my assets — you are acknowledging that I am your possession, or, at the very least, that you have designs upon me. You are exploiters (or are becoming such), monopolists, lusting after other men’s goods, so many thieves.”
	— Anselme Bellegarrigue, Anarchist Manifesto (1850)
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“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
	— Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), 'Brave New World' (1931)
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“Libertarian opponents of anarchy are attacking a straw man. Their arguments are usually utilitarian in nature and amount to "but anarchy won't work" or "we need the (things provided by the) state." But these attacks are confused at best, if not disingenuous. To be an anarchist does not mean you think anarchy will "work" (whatever that means); nor that you predict it will or "can" be achieved. It is possible to be a pessimistic anarchist, after all. To be an anarchist only means that you believe that aggression is not justified, and that states necessarily employ aggression. And, therefore, that states, and the aggression they necessarily employ, are unjustified. It's quite simple, really. It's an ethical view, so no surprise it confuses utilitarians. Accordingly, anyone who is not an anarchist must maintain either: (a) aggression is justified; or (b) states (in particular, minimal states) do not necessarily employ aggression.”
	— Stephan Kinsella
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“Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the power to create credit; and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. Take this power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for then this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you want to be slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers control money and control credit.”
	— Josiah Stamp (1880-1941), Director of the Bank of England, 1940
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“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”
	— Robert Higgs
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“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
	— Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), 4th century BC
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“Corporations are legal fictions created by the State to shield executives from liability… It’s like if I had a little hand-puppet, and I went to rob a bank, and the hand-puppet held the little gun and told people to hand over all the money, and then the hand-puppet grabbed the money and ran out, and then I got caught and I handed the hand-puppet over the police and then the police tried the hand-puppet, put the hand-puppet in jail, and I get to keep all the money.”
	— Stefan Molyneux
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“Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and a social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.”
	— L. Neil Smith
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“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”
	— H.L. Mencken (1880–1956)
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“Just as the purpose of education in monarchies is to enoble men's hearts, so its purpose in despotic states is to debase them. In despotic states education must be servile. Even those holding power benefit from such an education, for no one can be a tyrant without at the same time being a slave... Absolute obedience presupposes ignorance in the person who obeys; ignorance is presupposed as well in the person who commands. For he need not deliberate, doubt, or reason; he has only to will... Thus education is in one sense nonexistent. Everything previously known must be wiped out, so that something may be taught. It is necessary first to make a man into a bad subject in order to create a good slave.”
	— Montesquieu, 'Spirit of the laws' (1748)
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“Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

Other people are excited,
as though they were at a parade.
I alone don't care,
I alone am expressionless,
like an infant before it can smile.

Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.

Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharp;
I alone am dull.
Other people have purpose;
I alone don't know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother's breasts.”
	— Lao Tzu (sixth century BC), 'Tao Te Ching'
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% OCR with errors
“Perhaps the people are grasping reality In spite of indoctrination we have been subjected to via our schools, media, government, and others who wish to maintain the status quo, i.e. the few controlling, and living at the expense of, the many. This country was founded on the principle of individual Rights to life, liberty, and property which are inherent in the nature of man. Yet today most laws, regulatitons, and taxes are clear violations of the rights of the individual in favor of the group, society, government, the collective. Is not forced busing the result of forced schooling? Isn't thin a violation of individual rights? If government derives Its powers from the governed, how can it be "legal" Tor government to do things that are "illegal" for the individual? Consider gambling. Will the stale soon start selling drugs to raise "needed revenue"? Why nof Some states sell or control and lax alcohol! This is for the good of the people. Right? Has it ever dawned on the editors lhat the attitudes ol the 70 million projected non - voters may he very consistent with the reality that the concept of voting and electing representatives is basically dishonest arid fraudulent? If voting could change anything It would be made illegal! There is no way any politician can legally represent anyone because he was elected on a secret ballot by a small percentage of voters. He then claims to represent the people who voted against him and even those who wisely chose not to participate in such criminal activity. You say those 70 million stay - at - homes Will forfeit their right to complain about the way they are governed. Being enlightened, they are perhaps saying they do not want any part of a system where coercion in the form of taxation which is the taking of properly allegedly being protected and war which is nothing less than murder is the sole means of its existence. If you vote and are in Ihe majority you violate the rights ol the minority, or vice versa. The implicat:on is "might makes right". If yoj vote you are im plicitly agreeing to play the coercion game and must accept the results. If a person doesn't vote or otherwise participate in the aggression of government they are on very sound, consistent moral grounds a3 they attemp to live in peace and liberty. Which arc you for, individual freedom, or the tyranny of a dictator, the majority, or so - called law? I think it is lime the media made it explicitly clear where they stand. We cannot be part slave and free at the same time. It is amazing how many humans will accept almost anything and even adjust to living in chains if told to do so. By its very nature politics is corrupt. Lei us not be beguiled into going along with the establishment. Let us show them we are awaro and demand our freedom by not voting or otherwise sanctioning aggression. The coercive society can only euist with the sanction of us, its victims. If we want liberty and peace we must not attempt to shun responsibility by voting while politicians plunder us.”
	— Robert S, Borden, M.D, Clipped from The Lowell Sun, 24 Sep 1976, Fri, Page 7
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“Success, in this context [education, trivium method], is in producing appropriately critical, creative, self-sufficient individuals who become equipped to attract intellectual abundance into their lives as well as that which naturally follows from it - material abundance. If a person has not been exposed to this method, it is difficult to communicate to him the serenity-of-mind and self-assurance (i.e. the spiritual abundance) caused by this competence to appropriately validate one's own thinking as well as the thinking and doctrines of others. No amount of personal counseling or therapy can generate the self-esteem of having the ability to orient one's body and mind in the world through what is his most distinguishing attribute: that of his own rational thinking applied in a systematic manner. The pattern of the Trivium is the foundation of this system which produces an intuitive means to learn new material, not only during periods devoted to formal instruction, but over an entire lifetime. As the study and practice of music allow the hands to intuitively and immediately produce melody on a piano, for instance, so the study and practice of the trivium produces intuitive and immediate critical/creative thought. In being the method to know a subject rather than only to study a subject, it is truly the most fundamental preparation for the leading of a successful life - a gift every child, adolescent, and adult should be presented to elevate him to the dignity of self-determination.

It is stressed, the Trivium forms a habitual pattern-of-mind of how to think effectively, not what to think. As an added bonus, this is a serene pursuit. Because this is a method devoted to the "how" of thinking, it is not controversial. It is in the topics of "what" to think - religion, literature, philosophy, and modern science - where controversy reigns.”
	— Gene Odening (https://www.tragedyandhope.com/trivium/notes-by-gene-odening/)
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“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of.”
	— Michael Crichton
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% #voting
“I've got an idea that would revolutionize the way we do our weekly shopping: Every few years, we all vote for our favourite supermarket company. The one that gets more votes across the country than any other then gets to deliver our shopping every week to all of us, regardless of whom we voted for. It delivers goods of its own choosing, at prices that it sets. It will make us buy Pedigree Chum even if we don't have a dog. [...] Now, this is probably the stupidest idea you've ever heard. But it's exactly how we buy our political services.”
	— Chris Dillow
% http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2004/12/analogy_for_gov.html
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% #voting
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says, “They suck”.
But where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality.
No, they come from American homes, American families, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and they’re elected by American voters.This is the best we can do, folks. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.
….I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain.
Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain”, but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.
I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created. That I didn’t have anything to do with.
So when you’re having one of those swell elections that you like so much…on that day I will be doing essentially the same as you…the only difference is when I get done masturbating I’ll have a little something to show for it.”
	― George Carlin (1937–2008), https://youtu.be/HeMGqTwWA6U
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“The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Open despotism is better than this. The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If any one denies my right, let him try conclusions with me.

But a secret government is little less than a government of assassins. Under it, a man knows not who his tyrants are, until they have struck, and perhaps not then. He may guess, beforehand, as to some of his immediate neighbors. But he really knows nothing. The man to whom he would most naturally fly for protection, may prove an enemy, when the time of trial comes.

This is the kind of government we have; and it is the only one we are likely to have, until men are ready to say: We will consent to no Constitution, except such an one as we are neither ashamed nor afraid to sign; and we will authorize no government to do anything in our name which we are not willing to be personally responsible for.”
	— Lysander Spooner (1808–1887)
%
% #justice #natural law
“If justice be not a natural principle, then there is no such thing as injustice; and all the crimes of which the world has been the scene, have been no crimes at all; but only simple events, like the falling of the rain, or the setting of the sun; events of which the victims had no more reason to complain than they had to complain of the running of the streams, or the growth of vegetation...But if justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one; and can no more be changed—by any power inferior to that which established it—than can the law of gravitation, the laws of light, the principles of mathematics, or any other natural law or principle whatever; and all attempts or assumptions, on the part of any man or body of men—whether calling themselves governments, or by any other name—to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of justice, as a rule of conduct for any human being, are as much an absurdity, an usurpation, and a tyranny, as would be their attempts to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion in the place of any and all the physical, mental, and moral laws of the universe”
	— Lysander Spooner (1808–1887)
%
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship.”
	— Attributed to Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1714–1778), http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html
%
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
	— Edward Bernays (1891–1995), 'Propaganda, Chapter 1 – Organizing Chaos' (1928, Horace Liveright)
%
“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'”
	― Ayn Rand (1905–1982)
%
“One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.”
	— Bertrand Russell
%
“Now, to tell a child to believe in God is nonsense, utter nonsense — not that God does not exist, but because the child has not yet felt the thirst, the desire, the longing. He is not yet ready to go in search of the truth, the ultimate truth of life. He is not yet mature enough to inquire into the reality of existence. That love affair has to happen someday, but it can happen only if no belief is imposed upon him. If he is converted before the thirst has arisen to explore and to know, then his whole life he will live in a phony way; he will live in a pseudo way. Yes, he will talk about God because he has been told that God is. He has been told authoritatively, and he has been told by people who were very powerful in his childhood — his parents, his priests, his teachers. He has been told by people, and he had to accept it; it was a question of his survival. He could not say no to his parents because without them he would not be able to live at all. It was too risky to say no; he had to say yes. But his yes can't be true. How can it be true? He is saying yes only as a political device, to survive. You have not turned him into a religious person, you have made him a diplomat, you have created a politician.”
	— Osho, 'Intimacy' (2001)
%
% #love
“Love doesn't mean 'I want you', or 'I want to you to be mine', neither 'you're good looking', or 'you're sexy'... Doesn't mean 'I can't live without you', or 'I need you', or 'let's be together forever', or any of those things it is often mistaken for. What it actually means is: 'I really like, respect, and appreciate who you are in all your realness and sovereignty, and if there is anything I can offer, without compromising my true nature, that will help you on your path, then it will be a gift to me if you'll allow me to give it.' In this way I find I am loving more and more people every day.”
	— Red K. Elders
% https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2217251818515244&id=100006913427799
% https://www.facebook.com/bethany.e.bailey/posts/10155706814171496
%
“Immature people falling in love destroy each other's freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don't have the backbone, the spine; they don't have the integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love.”
	— Osho (1931–1990)
%
% #love #relationship
“But let there be spaces in your togetherness.
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
	— Khalil Gibran (1883–1931)
%
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”
	— Khalil Gibran (1883–1931)
%
“Agony is not separate from you, it is you.

Pain, suffering, misery, they are all separate from you; hence, momentarily they come and go. They have causes; when the causes are removed they disappear. Mostly they are your creations.

You hope for something, and then it does not materialize: great frustration comes in. You feel pain, hopelessness, as if you have been rejected by existence. Nothing of the sort has happened – it is all due to your expectation. The bigger the expectation, the bigger is going to be the frustration.

It is within your hands to be frustrated in life or not. Just your expectations should become smaller, smaller, smaller, and in the same proportion the frustration will become smaller. A day will come when there will be no expectation; then you will never come across any frustration.

You think, you imagine, some moments of pleasure – and they don’t materialize, because existence has no obligation to materialize your imaginations. It has never given you any promise that whatever you think is going to happen. You have taken it for granted without any enquiry, as if the whole existence owes you something.

You owe everything to existence.

Existence owes you nothing.”
	— Osho, 'From Darkness to Light' (2001)
%
% #intelligence vs. #intellect #reasoning
“Osho, how come you speak about political leaders and religious leaders in the same tone – is there no difference between them?

Fundamentally there is no difference at all. Superficially of course there are differences.

The basic desire to be a leader arises in people who are suffering from an inferiority complex. It does not matter whether they move into the political world or into the religious world; the will-to-power is an absolute indication that the man feels himself inferior to others and he wants to prove to the world that it is not so.

It is not only a question of proving to the world; through the world he wants to prove it to himself too, that he is not inferior to anybody. The only way mind can manage it is to make everybody inferior to you.

Mind is not your intelligence.

It may sound strange but this is a truth, that mind is not your intelligence. Mind can be intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence. Intellectuality is mechanical. You can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great philosopher – just playing with words which are all borrowed, arranging and rearranging thoughts, none of which are your own.

The intellect is absolutely bankrupt. It has nothing of its own, all is borrowed.

And that’s the difference between intelligence and intellect.

Intelligence has an eyesight of its own, a capacity to see into things, into problems. Intelligence is your born quality. It cannot be learned, it cannot be nurtured. Everybody is born with intelligence, but the society is in favor of intellect, because the intellectual person is not a real individual, he is phony. He has nothing of his own; he is a beggar, and beggars are not supposed to be emperors, are not supposed to be masters. They are destined to remain slaves.

So your so-called greatest scholars are continuously proving their slavery to the establishment. None of them is a rebel. They are hankering for the prizes and awards the establishment can bestow upon them: respectability, honor. They are all desiring to be Nobel laureates, but to get the Nobel prize you have to sell your soul. You have to accept a thousand and one things that no intelligent person can accept.

You have to support the status quo, the people who are in power, who have the money. You are just a puppet to them. Yes, it is a very mutual conspiracy: they give you the Nobel prize, they give you honorary doctorates, they make you world famous; in return you support their exploitation, their oppression, and whatever nonsense they are doing. You have to become a protecting wall.

And of course the world is going to listen to you because you are a Nobel prize winner, honored by Oxford, by Cambridge, by Harvard. The ordinary people, the common masses are bound to listen to you.

If you are supporting the society then naturally there is nothing wrong with the society; there is no need to change it. The problems are not created by the society but by the ”anti-social” elements.

And who are the anti-social elements? All the rebels are anti-social elements. It is these people who provoke the masses, steal their souls, make them aware that they also are human beings, not cattle. These are anti-social elements; they have to be destroyed.

Either they have to be purchased in some way ... give them a Nobel prize, and purchase them; give them honorary doctorates and purchase them. If they refuse to be purchased then society has all the ways to condemn them.

Their books will not be published by the great publishers, because those great publications are owned by the vested interests. Their names will disappear from the newspapers, from the
magazines, from the media. They will live almost as if they are not, as if they don’t exist.

This is a far superior way to destroy somebody than crucifying. […]

Now this is free publicity for two thousand years! […]

It is a very essential thing to understand, that the establishment first tries to persuade you, to bribe you. When it fails in purchasing and bribing you, then it comes into its true color: then it starts destroying you. And it has learned through the centuries that poisoning a Socrates is not good. You killed the man, but you made him immortal; you imprinted his message on the very soul of humanity.

You proved foolish – it was not the right way.

[…]

But intellectuals are not capable of resisting; they don’t have the guts, they can’t have, because all that they have is borrowed. They are easily purchasable, cheap. But they become a very significant protective wall around the establishment. People look towards them with respect. People think that if a Nobel prize winner is saying something it must be right – as if by winning the Nobel prize one attains to enlightenment, nirvana!

It is a political game. It is all politics.”
	— Osho, 'From Darkness to Light' (2001)
%
“[…] there is far more to human intelligence than its ability to navigate the arid landscape of objective reasoning. If we were seeking a truer indicator of intelligence, we might agree that its primary function is to help us live intelligently. This is not flattering to our culture but, when all is said and done, any other measurement amounts to delusion [...] The ability to reason, to understand the world abstractly, to synthesize information about it - all of these are wonderful strengths. But you can’t live intelligently if you habitually rely on symbolic representation and abstract reasoning. Neither of those abilities has the power to unlock your life’s passion for you, or reveal to your children the love you feel for them, or soften your heart into wonder, or enable you to dance to rock ’n’ roll, play soccer or enjoy theater. Reason can’t pay attention to the subtle pulse of the Present, or feel the way it is drifting through you. Reason can’t help you feel your connectedness to all that is. Reason can’t help you feel wholeness. And all of these things reason can’t do are clearly indispensable in enabling you to live intelligently. As I have mentioned, because the abstract thinking of the head cuts itself off from the body, it cuts itself off from what the body knows - and what the body most deeply knows is that it is of the world and is sustained by the world and belongs to it. When head-based thinking rejects the body, it rejects that intimate understanding. Blind to wholeness, it is not even aware of that deficiency - so it sees no need to compensate for it. When we rely on disembodied knowing to investigate the world around us, it can only reveal a mechanical world made of bits and pieces; we think we are seeing reality, but we are actually seeing what remains of the world when its wholeness is obliterated.”
	— Philip Shepherd, 'Radical Wholeness'
%
“The real does not die, the unreal never lived.
Set your mind right and all will be right.
When you know that the world is one,
that humanity is one,
you will act accordingly.
But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live.
Unless there is order in yourself,
there can be no order in the world.”
	— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
%
%“The children deserve all the respect you can manage, because they are so fresh, so innocent, so close to godliness. It is time to pay respect to them, not to force them to pay respect to all kinds of corrupted people – cunning, crooked, full of shit – just because they are old.
%In my commune I would like to reverse the whole thing: respect towards the children because they are closer to the source, you are far away. They are still original, you are already a carbon copy. And do you understand what it can do if you are respectful to children? Then through love and respect you can save them from going in any wrong direction – not out of fear but out of your respect and love.
%My grandfather .... I could speak a lie to anybody – even if I met God I could speak a lie without any trouble – but I could not speak a lie to my grandfather because he respected me so much. When the whole family was against me I could at least depend on the old man. He would not bother about all the proofs that were against me. He would say, ”I don’t care what he has done. If he has done it, it must be right. I know him, he cannot do wrong.”
%
“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for a single imaginary or unimportant disadvantage; that would take fire away from men because it burns, and water because it drowns, that remedies evils only through destruction. The laws that forbid one to bear arms are laws of this short; they disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. [...] These laws place the assaulted at a disadvantage and favour the assailants, and rather than reduce the number of murders they increase it, since an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
	— Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794), 'On Crimes and Punishment' (1764), pg. 87-88
%
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
	— John Stuart Mill
%
“Betting markets, and speculative markets more generally, seem to do very well at aggregating information. To have a say in a speculative market, you have to "put your money where your mouth is." Those who know they are not relevant experts shut up, and those who do not know this eventually lose their money, and then shut up. Speculative markets in essence offer to pay anyone who sees a bias in current market prices to come and correct that bias.”
	— R. Hanson
%
“Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly
different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have
assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient
work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is
self-respect.
   But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and
to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a
footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time,
please— this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of
your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of
agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these
parasites will use up 100 percent of your time— and squawk for more!
   So learn to say No—and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you
will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and
certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your
life and leave none of it for you.
   (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even
a stranger. But let the choice be *yours*. Don't do it because it is "expected"
of you.)”
	— Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), 'Time Enough For Love' (1973)
%
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from higher motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
	— Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), 'Time Enough For Love' (1973)
%
“The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”
	— Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), 'Time Enough For Love' (1973)
%
% #renaissance man
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonne, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
	— Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), 'Time Enough For Love' (1973)
%
“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty", "meaningless", or "dishonest", and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.”
	— Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), 'Time Enough For Love' (1973)
%
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck".”
	— Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), 'Time Enough For Love' (1973)
%
“A rational anarchist believes concepts such as 'state,' 'society,' and 'government' have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame… as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else.”
	— Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress' (1966)
%
“Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference — the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, — at the risk of a small present evil.”
	— Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850), 'That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen' (1850)
%
“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
	— Jiddu Krishnamurti (1901–1986)
%
“When death comes, it does not ask your permission; it comes and takes you; it destroys you on the spot. In the same way, can you totally drop hate, envy, pride of possession, attachment to beliefs, to opinions, to ideas, to a particular way of thinking? Can you drop all that in an instant? There is no “how to drop it”, because that is only another form of continuity. To drop opinion, belief, attachment, greed, or envy is to die—to die every day, every moment. If there is the coming to an end of all ambition from moment to moment, then you will know the extraordinary state of being nothing, of coming to the abyss of an eternal movement, as it were, and dropping over the edge—which is death.
I want to know all about death, because death may be reality; it may be what we call God—that most extraordinary something that lives and moves and yet has no beginning and no end.”
	— Jiddu Krishnamurti (1901–1986)
%
% #revolution #society
“To revolt within society in order to make it a little better - to bring about certain reforms - is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is like the revolt of prisoners who want better food, better treatment within the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual breaking away from society, and that is creative revolution.

Now, if you as an individual break away from society, is that action motivated by ambition? If it is, then you have not broken away at all, you are still within the prison, because the very basis of society is ambition, acquisitiveness, greed. But if you understand all that and bring about a revolution in your own heart and mind, then you are no longer ambitious, you are no longer motivated by envy, greed, acquisitiveness, and therefore you will be entirely outside of a society which is based on those things. Then you are a creative individual and in your action there will be the seed of a different culture.

So there is a vast difference between the action of creative revolution, and the action of revolt or mutiny within society. As long as you are concerned with mere reform, with decorating the bars and walls of the prison, you are not creative. Reformation always needs further reform, it only brings more misery, more destruction. Whereas, the mind that understands this whole structure of acquisitiveness, of greed, of ambition and breaks away from it — such a mind is in constant revolution.”
	— Jiddu Krishnamurti (1901–1986), 'Think On These Things'
%
% #revolt #conspiracy #mind control #bird's eye view
“"To suffocate any revolt in advance, it must not be violent. Hitler's types of methods are outdated. Just create a collective conditioning so powerful that the very idea of revolt will no longer come to the minds of men.
The ideal would be to format individuals from birth by limiting their innate biological skills. Secondly, conditioning would be continued by drastically reducing education, to bring it back to a form of professional integration. An uncultured individual has only a limited horizon of thought and the more his thought is restricted to mediocre concerns, the less he can revolt. Access to knowledge must be made increasingly difficult and elitist. Let the divide be widened between the people and science, let the information intended for the general public be anesthetized with any subversive content. Especially no philosophy. 
Again, persuasion must be used not direct violence: massively, through television, entertainment will always flatter the emotional or instinctive. We'll occupy the minds with what's futile and playful. It's good, in chattering and incessant music, to keep the mind from thinking. Sexuality will be the forefront of human interests. As a social tranquilizer, there's nothing better.
Generally, we will make sure to ban the seriousness of existence, deride everything of high value, maintain a constant apology of lightness, so that the euphoria of advertising becomes the standard of human happiness and the model of freedom. Conditioning will thus produce such integration itself, that the only fear - which must be maintained - will be that of being excluded from the system and thus of not having access to the conditions necessary for happiness.
The mass man, thus produced, should be treated as what he is: a calf, and he should be watched as a flock should be. Anything to sleep his lucidity is good socially, what would threaten to awaken him must be ridiculed, suffocated, fought. Any doctrine involving the system must first be designated as subversive and terrorist and those supporting it should then be treated as such.”
	— Günther Anders, 'The Obsolescence of Man' 1956
%
“They say that you should never talk about religion and politics around polite company. "They" say this because nobody wants to feel uncomfortable when someone else questions someone else's paradigm and actually gets them to consider what they have believed their whole life has been based on a lie. Most people don't mind talking about religion and politics around people who share the same views. But what does preaching to the choir achieve? The expression "you should never talk about religion and politics around company" was made up to get people to remain in their little bubbles and to continue to avoid discomfort while living comfortably believing whatever they want. This goes to show what a good job the rulers have done to get people to completely censor themselves from saying what they think out of fear of being cast out, called a weirdo and just feeling uncomfortable. Saying what you think even if it's around people who just don't want to hear it is what moves mankind in the direction it should be going. Not saying what you think makes you a coward.”
	— Michael Daneau
%
“Some of us do think that designer labels will save our souls. That's bad. But it's a whole lot better than thinking that, say, the Führer will save your soul, or a crusade against the infidels, or nationalism, or a host of other collective salvations. When the inevitable disappointment from consumerism comes, it's a private tragedy. When the inevitable disappointment from a collective salvation comes, it's a national crisis inviting some new, possibly worse, collective salvation. Until humans learn the wisdom of angels, I will remain a great supporter of crass consumerism and conspicuous consumption.”
	— Roger Koppl
%
        Every task involves constraint,
      Solve the thing without complaint;
       There are magic links and chains
       Forged to loose our rigid brains.
   Structures, strictures, though they bind,
         Strangely liberate the mind.
% James Falen, as quoted in dughof's "Le ton beau de Marot", p. 272
%
“Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as
 sophistication, which is baffling — the incomprehensible
 should cause suspicion rather than admiration. Possibly this
 trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat
 mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user.”
	— Niklaus Wirth
%
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
	— Thomas Jefferson
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“Language often obscures truth. More than is ordinarily realized, our eyes are blinded to the facts [...] by tricks of the tongue. When one uses the simple monosyllable "France" one thinks of France as a unit, an entity. When to avoid awkward repetition we use a personal pronoun in referring to a country — when for example we say "France sent her troops to conquer Tunis" — we impute not only unity but personality to the country. The very words conceal the facts and make international relations a glamorous drama in which personalized nations are the actors, and all too easily we forget the flesh-and-blood men and women who are the true actors. How different it would be if we had no such word as "France," and had to say instead — thirty-eight million men, women and children of very diversified interests and beliefs, inhabiting 218,000 square miles of territory! Then we should more accurately describe the Tunis expedition in some such way as this: "A few of these thirty-eight million persons sent thirty thousand others to conquer Tunis." This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who are the "few"? Why did they send the thirty thousand to Tunis? And why did these obey?”
	— Parker T. Moon
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“Watt refused applications for licenses to make engines under his patent: he discouraged experiments by Murdoch with locomotive models; he was hostile to the use of steam at high pressure; and the authority he wielded was such as to clog engineering enterprise for more than a generation.  If his monopoly had been allowed to expire in 1783 England might have had railways earlier.  If a similar privilege had been extended to Arkwright — if, indeed, his wide patents had not been annulled in 1781-5 — it is at least possible that a dead hand might have rested on the cotton industry also, and that forces tending to raise the standard of life of the poor would have been stifled.”
	— Ashton T.S., 'An Economic History of England: The 18th Century'
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“Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.”
	— William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)
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“When a parent forces parental responsibilities on a child, family roles become indistinct, distorted, or reversed. A child who is compelled to become his own parent, or even become a parent to his own parent, has no one to emulate, learn from, and look up to. Without a parental role model at this critical state of emotional development, a child’s personal identity is set adrift in a hostile sea of confusion.”
	— Susan Forward, 'Toxic Parents'
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“Many of us have set out on the path of enlightenment. We long for a release of selfhood in some kind of mystical union with all things. But that moment of epiphany--when we finally see the whole pattern and sense our place in the cosmic web--can be a crushing experience from which we never fully recover.

Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. You can not turn away. Your destiny is bound to the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

To seek enlightenment is to seek annihilation, rebirth, and the taking up of burdens. You must come prepared to touch and be touched by each and every thing in heaven and hell.”
	— Andrew Boyd, http://www.dailyafflictions.com/affliction9.html
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“As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody if I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT”.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “MATURITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exactly right moment. So I could be calm. Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”.

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worrying about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where everything is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.

We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born. Today I know “THAT IS LIFE”!”
%	— Charles Chaplin (1889–1977)
% TODO, it's NOT him https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin#Misattributed
% probably a re-translation (from Portuguese-BR) of a text from the book "When I Loved Myself Enough" by Kim & Alison McMillen (2001)
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% http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/charlie-chaplin
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“I realized that I could lose myself in a character. I could live in a character. It was a choice. And when I finished with that, I took a month to remember who I was. ‘What do I believe? What are my politics? What do I like and dislike?’ It took me a while, and I was depressed going back into my concerns and my politics. But there was a shift that had already happened. And the shift was, ‘Wait a second. If I can put Jim Carrey aside for four months, who is Jim Carrey? Who the hell is that?’ ... I know now he does not really exist. He’s ideas. ... Jim Carrey was an idea my parents gave me. Irish-Scottish-French was an idea I was given. Canadian was an idea that I was given. I had a hockey team and a religion and all of these things that cobble together into this kind of Frankenstein monster, this representation. It’s like an avatar. These are all the things I am. You are not an actor, or a lawyer. No one is a lawyer. There are lawyers, law is practiced, but no one is a lawyer. There is no one, in fact, there.”
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey)
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% #fed
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“To cause high prices, all the Federal Reserve Board will do will be to lower the rediscount rate..., producing an expansion of credit and a rising stock market; then when ... business men are adjusted to these conditions, it can check ... prosperity in mid career by arbitrarily raising the rate of interest. It can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate, or cause violent fluctuations by a greater rate variation and in either case it will possess inside information as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down. This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money. They know in advance when to create panics to their advantage, They also know when to stop panic. Inflation and deflation work equally well for them when they control finance.”
	— Charles August Lindbergh Sr. (1859–1924), 'Real Needs, Volume 1, Issue 1' (1916)
% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_August_Lindbergh
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“Egalitarians are acting as terribly spoiled children, denying the structure of reality on behalf of the rapid materialization of their own absurd fantasies. Not only spoiled but also highly dangerous; for the power of ideas is such that the egalitarians have a fair chance of destroying the very universe that they wish to deny and transcend, and to bring that universe crashing around all of our ears. Since their methodology and their goals deny the very structure of humanity and of the universe, the egalitarians are profoundly anti-human; and, therefore, their ideology and their activities may be set down as profoundly evil as well. Egalitarians do not have ethics on their side unless one can maintain that the destruction of civilization, and even of the human race itself, may be crowned with the laurel wreath of a high and laudable morality.”
	― Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995)
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“Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing. Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young commercial traveller, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the ‘shop,’ in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”
	— William James (1843–1916), 'Principles of Psychology', vol. 1, ch. 4 (1890)
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“Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the more you are victimized because, they are aware that you're not going to be as aggressive, destructive, or possibly as abusive and so you are the one who has to bend. You're the one who has to change and this constant rapping of rational people's souls around the prickly irrationalities of other people are what appeasers are constantly doing.”
	— Stefan Molyneux
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"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was...so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes...that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent 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. One day it is over his head...

...you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’ the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.

"...You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off...Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes...Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you...and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all...

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood.
	— Milton Mayer, Holocaust survivor
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“Malignant narcissists are clever at camouflaging their agenda, even, or particularly, to themselves; they are so inwardly dissociated that they easily fall for and believe their own lies. Very charismatic and adept at charming and manipulating others, malignant narcissists can have a certainty, a self-assuredness and lack of doubt which can be very appealing, seductive and convincing to others. Only someone who is convinced of how they see the world can be convincing to others. It is important not to forget that it is possible to be certain about something and be completely wrong. Their confidence can be an airtight seal covering deep shame, insecurities and fears through an inflated self-image. Intense feelings of revenge, fury, and rage—“narcissistic rage”—verging on insanity manifest when their fear and shame are exposed and their narcissism threatened. Their victim, the target of their rage, is confused with the source of their shame. By defeating and humiliating the victim, they are momentarily freed of their shame, but their acting out in this way ultimately adds to and reinforces their shame ever-more deeply in a continually-amplifying, pathology-creating self-reinforcing feedback loop. Their rage is their attempt to hold themselves together in the only way they know how—by waging war on all that terrifies them. There is nothing that terrifies a malignant narcissist more than getting a glimpse of their deformed, disfigured, twisted and convoluted condition.”
	— Paul Levy, 'Awakened by Darkness: When Evil Becomes your Father'
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“In a better world, every family will learn from children. You are in such a hurry to teach them. Nobody seems to learn from them, and they have much to teach you. And you have nothing to teach them.

Just because you are older and powerful you start making them just like you without ever thinking about what you are, where you have reached, what your status is in the inner world. You are a pauper; and you want the same for your child also?

But nobody thinks; otherwise people would learn from small children. Children bring so much from the other world because they are such fresh arrivals. They still carry the silence of the womb, the silence of the very existence.”
	― Osho (1931–1990), 'From Darkness to Light' (1985)
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“When I was about twenty years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time.

But one day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking--the first in his life. And she told him he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying.

He said to her, 'Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock you can throw at me.' All of the sudden a mother understood how the situation felt from the child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, it mkaes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone.

The mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. Because violence begins in the nursery--one can raise children into violence.”
	— Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002), author of 'Pippi Longstocking' in a peace prize acceptance speech
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“All the people around you have been helped, greatly helped, to be what they are. You have been helped; now you want to help your children too.

All that you can do is be loving, be nourishing, be warm, be accepting. The child brings an unknown potential, and there is no way to figure out what he is going to be. So no procedure can be suggested: "This way you should help the child." And each child is unique so there cannot be a general discipline for every child.”
	― Osho (1931–1990), 'From Darkness to Light' (1985)
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“You are asking me how […] we can save the original face of our children. You don’t have to do anything directly. Anything done directly will be a disturbance. You have to learn the art of non-doing.

That is a very difficult art. It is not something that you have to do to protect, to save, the original face of the child. Whatever you do will distort the original face. You have to learn non-doing; you have to learn to keep away, out of the way of the child. You have to be very courageous because it is risky to leave the child to himself.

For thousands of years we have been told, if the child is left to himself he will be a savage. That is sheer nonsense. I am siting before you – do you think I am a savage? And I have lived without being interfered with by my parents. Yes, there was much trouble for them and there will be much trouble for you too, but it is worth it.”
	― Osho (1931–1990), 'From Darkness to Light' (1985)
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“In the barren wilderness of my soul, I felt stuck—inwardly, outwardly and everywhere in-between. To quote Jung, “You are so sterile because, without your knowledge, something like an evil spirit has stopped up the source of your fantasy, the fountain of your soul.”
This felt very true for me—the evil spirit that had animated my father felt like it had entered me and was plugging up the bubbling spring of my soul. My very “person” was going through a death experience that was “impersonal” and universal. I was watching my own death from outside of myself, while at the same time being the one who was experiencing it within the depths of my soul. Speaking of such a situation of “sheer stagnation,” Jung poetically writes that if we can “impregnate it with the interest born of alarm at your inner death, then something can take shape in you, for your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness if only you will allow it to penetrate into you. If you prove receptive to this ‘call of the wild,’ the longing for fulfillment will quicken the sterile wilderness of your soul as rain quickens the dry earth.””
	― Paul Levy, 'Awakened by Darkness: When Evil Becomes your Father'
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“What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children, life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until … a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living?”
	— Karl Ove Knausgård
% related: On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist
% https://southerncrossreview.org/9/kleist.htm
% https://www.scribd.com/document/191686595/Heinrich-von-Kleist-A-marionettszinhazrol
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% #peace #happiness
“Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you. When I was a young man, I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman…. I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and out of my mind…. Peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak and addled mind. But as I went on ... it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn’t different from the others, I was the same... Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty…. Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt…. I re-formulated. I don’t know when, date, time, all that but the change occurred. Something in me relaxed, smoothed out. I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn’t have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. Or a dog walking along a sidewalk. Or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful. Then- it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those…. I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness…. And finally I discovered real feelings of others, unheralded, like lately, like this morning, as I was leaving, for the track, I saw my wife in bed, just the shape of her head there…. so still, I ached for her life, just being there under the covers. I kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. Feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.”
	— Charles Bukowski (1920–1994)
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“If you wish to have no government in your marriage, find a woman who has rejected the government. Find a woman who has already invested in virtue. She has already guaranteed, by her past actions that she will choose integrity and virtue over material gain, over emotional comfort, every time. Then you have nothing to fear. There are very clear ideological markers. A woman who is a conformist is one who seeks comfort over integrity. She will then take half your house, because it's more comfortable to have more money; she's not barred from such action by any moral scruples. If you want to find a woman you can trust, find a woman who has been willing to suffer for virtue, and who fully recognizes the non-aggression principle. Then you'll get a woman who is not manipulative, who won't lie to you, who won't hit your children, who won't threaten you. Because you are both the rarest of rare creatures, people who value integrity over comfort, she's not gonna sleep around because she's not gonna find someone like you.”
	— Stefan Molyneux (1966–), host of https://freedomainradio.com/
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“Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you're at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, I want you to type in, 'Japanese-Americans 1942,' and you'll find out all about your precious fucking rights…

In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was … right this way! Into the internment camps.

Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took them away. And rights aren't rights if someone can take 'em away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY privileges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter. Yah, sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn't give a fuck about them. The government doesn't care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. It simply doesn't give a fuck about you. It's interested in its own power. That's the only thing; keeping it, and expanding wherever possible.”
	― George Carlin (1937–2008), http://youtu.be/koW2JX4AInw
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“Traditional education offers a plethora of examples of experiences of the kinds just mentioned. It is a great mistake to suppose, even tacitly, that the traditional schoolroom was not a place in which pupils had experiences. Yet this is tacitly assumed when progressive education as a plan of learning by experience is placed in sharp opposition to the old. The proper line of attack is that the experiences, which were had, by pupils and teachers alike, were largely of a wrong kind. How many students, for example, were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the Way in which learning was experienced by them? How many acquired special skills by means of automatic drill so that their power of judgment and capacity to act intelligently in new situations was limited? How many came to associate the learning process with ennui and boredom? How many found what they did learn so foreign to the situations of life outside the school as to give them no power of control over the latter? How many came to associate books with dull drudgery, so that they were "conditioned" to all but flashy reading matter?”
	— John Dewey (1859–1952), Experince and Education' (1938)
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“There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
	— John Swinton (1829–1901), chief editorial writer of The New York Times during the decade of the 1860s
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% #alienation #enlightenment #truth #society
%https://www.facebook.com/cashify/posts/4154274041305698
It is usually the pain of betrayal, the disillusionment with the world that comes with it, which sets one upon the quest for what is true and real.  
One cannot be true to two different agendas though.  Either you want to fit in and have society's approval---or the only thing that matters to you is what's real.  The two are utterly incompatible values.
Society is shallow, vapid, cowardly, authoritarian and short sighted.  They behave as if their deaths are not coming any day now.  They devote their energies, time and attention to working hard at things which don't really matter.  
They try to impress others with accomplishments and spend most of their day to day lives in codependent relationships, arguing, defending their egos, and trying to control others.
Fortunately the result of all this tends to be a devastating emotional body slam of heartache that leaves a physical ache in the chest.  And in that there is a good possibility that one will realize they never want to feel that way again.  And they will admit it was their own foolishness that brought them to this place.  So they will want wisdom and truth if for no other reason than to avoid such torture in the future.
But then, set upon this quest for the true, the real and the beautiful, there comes the chance to turn one's attention away from fear based thought habits and to for the first time experience pure being, REAL LOVE beyond both words and understanding, inexpressible truth.
After that the fake, fleeting and shiny temptations that come with fitting into society lose their pull.  They are nothing like real love.
- James Hunter
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“Knowing transforms you.

Knowledge only gives you a false idea that you are wise.

It is better to be sincerely ignorant – because there is a chance of change – than to be a hypocrite insincerely believing that you know.

Ignorance has done no harm to anybody.

Knowledge has done immense harm.

The knowledgeable person goes on living with this false idea that he knows. And because he knows, there is no need to enquire any more. The ignorant man is continuously on the verge of enquiry; always a question mark is there. And this is one of the traits of human nature, that you cannot live with a question mark. Either you have to cover it with false knowledge – which becomes your answer – or you have to find the real answer so that the question disappears.

Knowledge is not the answer but only a pretension of an answer.

You say, "Knowing perfectly well" .... Drop this idea of knowledge. Please just accept your ignorance.

Be courageous and capable of saying, of many things, "I do not know."”
	― Osho (1931–1990), 'From Darkness to Light' (1985)
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“[Politicians] can promise anything. Promises are always for tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. […] The promises have not changed – that means certainly nothing has been achieved. The same promises are being given to you and you go on following, hoping. Hope is the greatest drug that man has invented.

Strange, that religious people are against drugs; politicians are also against drugs. […] They are afraid of drugs because drugs are competitors to them. LSD can give you hallucinations of heaven. That’s the trouble. No religion can afford to allow people to use LSD. LSD is not dangerous; taken in the right proportions, under medical care, it can be tremendously helpful in religious growth. […] Religions are not ready to allow it for the simple reason that if LSD can give you a beautiful experience – hallucinatory, but still it is an experience and tremendously satisfying, fulfilling – then just promises will look like dry bones without any juice in them. Only idiots perhaps may continue to chew the dry bones.”
	― Osho (1931–1990), 'From Darkness to Light' (1985)
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“In the human being’s growth, the presence of the Master is needed, but not any spiritual guidance. All guidance is bogus. It is exploitation.

The real thing never comes through practice, through discipline. The real thing only happens between two living flames.

All that is needed is that those two living flames should come closer.

Now, coming closer is not a discipline. It is a love affair, it is not a practice. That’s why I say that religion is a love affair, a love affair with existence itself. Be silent, be available, trust – because you have nothing to lose.”
	― Osho (1931–1990), 'From Darkness to Light' (1985)
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% #law
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“All men are brought up to the habit of obeying the laws of the state before everything. The whole existence of modern times is defined by laws. A man marries and is divorced, educates his children, and even (in many countries) professes his religious faith in accordance with the law. What about the law then which defines our whole existence? Do men believe in it? Do they regard it as good? Not at all. In the majority of cases people of the present time do not believe in the justice of the law, they despise it, but still they obey it. It was very well for the men of the ancient world to observe their laws. They firmly believed that their law (it was generally of a religious character) was the only just law, which everyone ought to obey. But is it so with us? we know and cannot help knowing that the law of our country is not the one eternal law; that it is only one of the many laws of different countries, which are equally imperfect, often obviously wrong and unjust, and are criticised from every point of view in the newspapers. The Jew might well obey his laws, since he had not the slightest doubt that God had written them with his finger; the Roman too might well obey the laws which he thought had been dictated by the nymph Egeria. Men might well observe the laws if they believed the Tzars who made them were God's anointed, or even if they thought they were the work of assemblies of lawgivers who had the power and the desire to make them as good as possible. But we all know how our laws are made. We have all been behind the scenes, we know that they are the product of covetousness, trickery, and party struggles; that there is not and cannot be any real justice in them. And so modern men cannot believe that obedience to civic or political laws can satisfy the demands of the reason or of human nature. Men have long ago recognized that it is irrational to obey a law the justice of which is very doubtful, and so they cannot but suffer in obeying a law which they do not accept as judicious and binding.”
	— Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), 'The Kingdom of God is Within You' (1894)