“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
-Howard Zinn
“A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.”
-William Blum
“Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag 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. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
-Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Reich Marshall
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
-Ambrose Bierce
"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
-Kurt Vonnegut
"Imagine,” Tyler said, “stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you’ll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles."
-The book Fight Club
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, schools destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the mainstream media destroys information, and religions destroy spirituality."-Anonymous
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
"The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity."
-Dr. Robert Anthony
“Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
-Frederick Douglas
“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”
-Arundhati Roy
“There’s room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,”
-John Lennon
“The point of public relations slogans like ‘Support our troops’ is that they don’t mean anything… That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about.”
-Noam Chompsky
“The corporations don’t have to lobby the government any more. They are the government.”
-Jim Hightower
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
-Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945
“Expecting FOX News to report real news is about as silly as waiting for George Bush and Dick Cheney to tell the truth… Americans care, but it’s tough to care when you don’t know what’s going on. That ignorance is what the warmakers count on and what the corporate media delivers.”
-Amy Goodman
“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’
Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’
Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’
But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’
And there comes a point when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
“The truth hurts, but denial is what will kill you.”
-Anonymous
“What’s public opinion? It’s the education system plus the media.”
-Mark Green (President of Air America radio)
“Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything.”
-Stalin
“Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM.”
-John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
“Fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
-The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
-David Rockefeller, September 14, 1994
“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.”
-Edgar J. Hoover
“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 invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.”
-Henry Louis Mencken
“Government cripples you, then hands you a crutch and says, ‘See, if it wasn’t for us, you couldn’t walk.’”
-Harry Browne
“As a rule of thumb, if the government wants you to know it, it probably isn’t true.”
-Craig Murray
“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
-Albert Einstein
“Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.”
-Howard Zinn
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
-Thomas Pynchon, Jr.
“It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continous, the essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchal society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects, and its object is not victory, but to keep the very structure of society in tact.”
-George Orwell
“Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country”
-Edward Bernays, assistant to William Paley, founder of CBS
“…ironically, perhaps, the best organized dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees.”
-Jeremy Hardy, The Guardian (UK)
"You’ve got to rattle your cage door. You’ve got to let them know that you’re in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you’ll sure have a lot more fun."
-Florynce Kennedy
These quotes have also been added to my quotes page.
Peace
Idzie
bg one on the collapse of civilization, green anarchy, etc. with one of the adult (I hesitate to use the word teacher) facilitator people at Voyagers. It was just the type of discussion I love, where it's a sharing of ideas, discussing and questioning each others points, all without ever feeling confrontational or like you're in a debate (I'm not a huge fan of debates). It's my favourite type of brain workout. :-)
