The Noble Lie

“Force shites upon reason’s back.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.”
- Frank Zappa

“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.”
- Plato

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
-George Orwell

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.
- George Orwell

“Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns. Why should we allow them to have ideas?”
- Joseph Stalin, or “Uncle Joe” as Roosevelt called him

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
- Steven Biko

“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.”
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
- Winston Churchill

“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

“Such human weeds clog up the path….We must clear the way for a better world; we must cultivate our garden.”
Margaret Sanger, eugenicist and founder of Planned Parenthood

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”
- Victor Hugo

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
- Mark Twain

“All civilization is centralization. All centralization is economy.”
- Brooks Adams, son of John Quincy Adams

“War is the ultimate form of economic competition.”
- Brooks Adams

“America is now a land of socialism for the rich and brutal capitalism for the poor.”
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over City, State, and nation… It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection… To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.”
- John Hylan

“I’m afraid if my demons leave me, my angels will take flight as well.”
- Poet Rainer Maria Rilke, on rejecting psychotherapy

“Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.”
- Noam Chomsky

“When the winds of change are blowing, some people are building shelters, and some people are building windmills.”
- Chinese Proverb

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
- PJ Proudhon