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QUOTATION: Power! Did you ever hear of men being asked whether other souls should have power or not? It is born in them. You may dam up the fountain of water, and make it a stagnant marsh, or you may let it run free and do its work; but you cannot say whether it shall be there; it is there. And it will act, if not openly for good, then covertly for evil; but it will act.
ATTRIBUTION: Olive Schreiner (1855–1920), South African writer, feminist. Lyndall, in The Story of an African Farm, pt. 2, ch. 4 (1883).
QUOTATION: Power lasts ten years; influence not more than a hundred.ATTRIBUTION: Korean proverb, quoted in Alan L. Mackay, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye
(1977).QUOTATION: Power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the person of the wealthy.
Celebrity is not inherent in any personality. To be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power requires access to major institutions.
ATTRIBUTION: C. Wright Mills (1916–1962), U.S. sociologist. The Power Elite, ch. 1 (1956).
QUOTATION: Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
ATTRIBUTION: Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850), French novelist. (1846, trans. by George Saintsbury, 1971). About Catherine of Medici, Introduction, First published in book form as Catherine de Medici expliquée, Souverain (1843), It was subsequently included in the Conte et romans philosophiques, in the Etudes philsophique, and finally in the Comédie humaine.
QUOTATION: Power is the great aphrodisiac.ATTRIBUTION: Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), German–born U.S. Republican politician,
secretary of state. quoted in New York Times (Jan. 19, 1971).QUOTATION: Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to
remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul.
ATTRIBUTION: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. “Self-Reliance,” Essays, First Series (1841, repr. 1847).
QUOTATION: O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside, to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud—what stirs you if the senses show you nothing? Light stirs you, formed in Heaven, by itself, or by His will Who sends it down to us.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Purgatory,” cto. 17, l. 13-18, The Divine Comedy (c. 1307-1321), trans. by Mark Musa (1981).
QUOTATION: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men
are almost always bad man.ATTRIBUTION: John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902), British
historian. Letter, April 3, 1887, to Bishop Mandell Creighton. The Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, vol. 1, ch. 13, ed. Louise Creighton (1904).
William Pitt the Elder had made a similar observation, in a speech to the House of Lords, Jan. 9, 1770: “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.” In the present century, the economist J.W. Galbraith wrote, “In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.” (”The United States,” published in New York Nov. 15, 1971, repr. In A View from the Stands, 1986).
QUOTATION: Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain
strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategic situation in a particular society.
ATTRIBUTION: Michel Foucault (1926–1984), French philosopher. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, pt. 4, ch. 2 (1976).
QUOTATION: Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.
ATTRIBUTION: Gloria Steinem (b. 1934), U.S. feminist writer, editor. Ms (New York, July 1978 and July/Aug. 1982). Far From the Opposite Shore, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983).
QUOTATION: Power has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the People.ATTRIBUTION: Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), British statesman, author. Sybil, bk. 4, ch.
14 (1845).
QUOTATION: Power acquired by violence is only usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
ATTRIBUTION: Denis Diderot (1713–1784), French philosopher, encyclopedist, dramatist, novelist, art critic. “Political Authority,” Encyclopedia, second paragraph (1751).
“ During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man…
…No art; no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Thomas HobbesLeviathan (1651) PT 1 CH 13
QUOTATION: Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
ATTRIBUTION: George Orwell (1903–1950), British author. O’Brien to Winston Smith, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, pt. 3, ch. 3 (1949).
QUOTATION: By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them.
ATTRIBUTION: C. Wright Mills (1916–1962), U.S. sociologist. The Power Elite, ch. 1, “The Higher Circles,” (1956).
QUOTATION: Supreme power rests in the will of all or of the majority.ATTRIBUTION: Georg Büchner (1813–1837), German dramatist, revolutionary. Trans. by
Gerhard P. Knapp (1994). The Hessian Messenger (1834).
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. 1995.
power
NOUN: 1. The right and power to command, decide, rule, or judge: authority, command, control, domination, dominion, jurisdiction, mastery, might, prerogative, sovereignty, sway. Informal : say-so. See OVER. 2. Capacity or power for work or vigorous activity: animation, energy, force, might, potency, puissance, sprightliness, steam, strength. Informal : get-up-and-go, go, pep, peppiness, zip. See ACTION. 3. The capacity to exert an influence: force, forcefulness, magnetism. See STRONG. 4. Regional. A great deal: abundance, mass, mountain, much, plenty, profusion, wealth, world. Informal : barrel, heap, lot, pack, peck 2 , pile. Regional : sight. See BIG. 5. Effective means of influencing, compelling, or punishing: force, weight. Informal : clout, muscle. See OVER, STRONG. 6. The state or quality of being physically strong: brawn, might, muscle, potence, potency, powerfulness, puissance, sinew, strength, thew (often used in plural). See STRONG.
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. 1995.
potency
NOUN: 1. The power or capacity to produce a desired result: effect, effectiveness, effectuality, effectualness, efficaciousness, efficacy, efficiency, influence. See AFFECT. 2. Capacity or power for work or vigorous activity: animation, energy, force, might, power, puissance, sprightliness, steam, strength. Informal : get-up-and-go, go, pep, peppiness, zip. See ACTION. 3. The state or quality of being physically strong: brawn, might, muscle, potence, power, powerfulness, puissance, sinew, strength, thew (often used in plural). See STRONG.
sway
NOUN: 1. The right and power to command, decide, rule, or judge: authority, command, control, domination, dominion, jurisdiction, mastery, might, power, prerogative, sovereignty. Informal : say-so. See OVER. 2. The act of exercising controlling power or the condition of being so controlled: command, control, dominance, domination, dominion, mastery, reign, rule. See OVER. 3. The power to produce an effect by indirect means: influence, leverage, weight. Informal : clout. Slang : pull. See AFFECT.
VERB: 1. To have an impact on in a certain way: dispose, incline, influence, predispose. See AFFECT, LIKE. 2. Archaic. To exercise the authority of a sovereign: govern, reign, rule. Idioms: wear the crown (or purple) . See OVER. 3. To move back and forth or from side to side, as if about to fall: teeter, totter, vacillate, waver, weave, wobble. See REPETITION. 4. To move rhythmically back and forth suspended or as if suspended from above: oscillate, swing. See MOVE, REPETITION.
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. 1995.
control
NOUN: 1. The right and power to command, decide, rule, or judge: authority, command, domination, dominion, jurisdiction, mastery, might, power, prerogative, sovereignty, sway. Informal : say-so. See OVER. 2. The act of exercising controlling power or the condition of being so controlled: command, dominance, domination, dominion, mastery, reign, rule, sway. See OVER. 3. The continuous exercise of authority over a political unit: administration, direction, governance, government, rule. See CONTROL, POLITICS. 4. The keeping of one's thoughts and emotions to oneself: reserve, restraint, reticence, self-control, self-restraint, taciturnity, uncommunicativeness. See RESTRAINT.
VERB: 1. To bring one's emotions under control: collect 1 , compose, contain, cool, simmer down. Idioms: cool it. See RESTRAINT. 2. To exercise authority or influence over: direct, dominate, govern, rule. Idioms: be at the helm, be in the driver's seat, hold sway over, hold the reins. See OVER. 3. To keep the mechanical operation of (a device) within proper parameters: govern, regulate. See CONTROL, MACHINE.
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. 1995.
influence
NOUN: 1. The power or capacity to produce a desired result: effect, effectiveness, effectuality, effectualness, efficaciousness, efficacy, efficiency, potency. See
AFFECT. 2. The strong effect exerted by one person or thing on another: force, impact, impression, repercussion. See AFFECT. 3. The power to produce an effect by indirect means: leverage, sway, weight. Informal : clout. Slang : pull. See AFFECT.
VERB: To have an impact on in a certain way: dispose, incline, predispose, sway. See AFFECT, LIKE.
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. 1995.
seduction
NOUN: Something that attracts, especially with the promise of pleasure or reward: allurement, bait, come-on, enticement, inducement, inveiglement, invitation, lure, temptation. See LIKE.
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. 1995.
seduce
VERB: 1. To beguile or draw into a wrong or foolish course of action: allure, entice, inveigle, lure, tempt. Idioms: lead astray. See PERSUASION. 2. To lure or persuade into a sexual relationship or a sexual act: debauch, undo. See SEX.
ALEKSANDR I. SOLZHENITSYN:
You can have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power.
BLAISE PASCAL:
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
FREDA ADLER:
Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS:
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS:
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832), Lacon, 1825
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
Abraham Lincoln quotes
Josiah Gilbert Holland: Quotes on PowerResponsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power.
Sri Sathya Sai Baba: Quotes on PowerSome say knowledge is power, but that is not true. Character is power.
Christopher Morley: Quotes on PowerThe big shots are only the little shots who keep shooting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Quotes on PowerThe creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945)Chancellor of Germany
“The great masses of the people at the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously evil . . . they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.”
“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”
“If the lie is large enough, everyone will believe it.”
“The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy.”
“Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We’ll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration. That’s the bastion of money.”
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.”
“Why nationalize industry when you can nationalize the people?”
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.”
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945)Chancellor of Germany
“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole. . . that above all, the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. . . we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man.”
“All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself.”
“This state, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture. . . The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call--to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness--idealism. By this we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.”
“If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things.”
“The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.”
“Of what importance is all that, if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the Party, is supreme over them regardless of whether they are owners or workers. All that is unessential; our socialism goes far deeper. It establishes a relationship of the individual to the State, the national community. Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
“The Big Lie is a major untruth uttered frequently by leaders as a means of duping and controlling the constituency.” [from Mein Kampf]
“The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.” [1924]
Mahatma [Mohandas Karamchand] Gandhi
(1869-1948)Indian Social Reformer and Spiritual Leader
“No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom.”
“Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end.”
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”
“One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman.”
“Freedom is not worth living if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that previous right.”
“I look upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor.”
“The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.”
“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty and democracy?”
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to the Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)Baptist Minister, Civil Rights Leader and 1964 Nobel Prize-Winner for
Peace
“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government. . . .There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, ‘Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,’ but will curse and damn you when you say, ‘Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!’ There is something wrong with that press.”
“Don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as His divine messianic force to be--a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America: ‘You are too arrogant! If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power. . . ’”[Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967]
“There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns in the hands of a few desperate men.” The Social Organization of Nonviolence (1959) 1986:33.
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
“The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government.”
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. ”
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. . . Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“Nothing good ever comes of violence.”
“A piece of freedom is no longer enough for human beings . . . unlike bread, a slice of liberty does not finish hunger. Freedom is like life. It cannot be had in installments. Freedom is indivisible--we have it all, or we are not free.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)Baptist Minister, Civil Rights Leader and 1964 Nobel Prize-Winner for
Peace
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“Nothing good ever comes of violence.”
“A piece of freedom is no longer enough for human beings . . . unlike bread, a slice of liberty does not finish hunger. Freedom is like life. It cannot be had in installments. Freedom is indivisible--we have it all, or we are not free.”
“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.”
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] (1835-1910)American Author and Humorist
“When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by
individuals?”
“Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of
pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which
isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label
you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself
and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties - the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety - the one which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t
bear to be in disfavor; can’t endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, ‘He’s on the right track.’ Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers
glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We
have seen it happen. In some million of instances.”
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your
conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.”
“Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery.”
“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is
the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; its institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for
rags, to worship rags, to die for rags - that is a loyalty of unreason…”
“The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”
Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] (1835-1910)American Author and Humorist
“For in a Republic, who is ‘the country?’ Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant--merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.”
“There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.”
“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” (1866)
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’--with his mouth.”
“The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will--warily and cautiously--object . . . at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.’
Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity.
Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men . . .
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.”
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)English Philosopher, Author and 1950 Nobel Prize-Winner in Literature
“The fundamental difference between the liberal and the illiberal outlook is that the former regards all questions as open to discussion and all opinions as open to a greater or lesser measure of doubt, while the latter holds in advance that certain opinions are absolutely unquestionable, and that no argument against them must be allowed to be heard. What is curious about this position is the belief that if impartial investigation were permitted it would lead men to the wrong conclusion, and that ignorance is, therefore, the only safeguard against terror. This point of view cannot be accepted by any man who wishes reason rather than prejudice to govern human action.”
“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”
“War does not determine who is right--only who is left.”
“When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine.”
“Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.”
“Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.” [1914 on World War I]
“And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride.” [1914 on World War I]
“At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.”
Friedrich W. Nietzsche (1844-1900)German Philosopher and Poet
“Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves.”
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster . . . for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
“How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy.”
“The punishment of the criminal is measured by the degree of astonishment of the judge who finds his crime incomprehensible.”
Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)Italian Political Philosopher
“Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But this must happen in such a way that no one becomes aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand, to be produced immediately.”
“For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances as though they were realities…and are often more influenced by things that seem than by those that are.”
“Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.”
“A new prince has never been known to disarm his subjects, on the contrary, when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, for by arming them these arms become your own, those that you suspected become faithful and those that were faithful remain so, and from being merely subjects become your partisans. . . . But when you disarm them, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred against you.”
“For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do it harm.”
“War should be the only study of a prince.”
“Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.”
“Men rise from one ambition to another--first they seek to secure themselves from attack, and then they attack others.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)German-born American Physicist and 1921 Nobel Prize-Winner in Physics
“All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the
political field.”
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!”
“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. . . the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have
become a watchmaker.”
“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”
“First, the prominence of war in American life since 1914, amounting to a virtual Seventy-Five Years War, and with this the staggering size of the American military
establishment since World War II. The Framers had relied on two broad oceans for the license to draft the most nonmilitary constitution imaginable.”
“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.
This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of
murder.
“I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.”
“Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.”
“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”
“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
“You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.”
“Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his
views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”
“Force always attracts men of low morality.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)German-born American Physicist and 1921 Nobel Prize-Winner in Physics
“I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.”
“The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.”
“The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.”
“The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)Russian Novelist
“What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.”
Crazy Horse [Tashunca-uitco] (?-1877)Native American Chief of the Oglala Sioux
“I was hostile to the white man. . . . We preferred hunting to a life of idleness on our reservations. At times we did not get enough to eat and we were not allowed to hunt. All we wanted was peace and to be let alone. Soldiers came . . . in the winter..and destroyed our villages. Then Long Hair (Custer) came . . . They said we massacred him, but he would have done the same to us. Our first impulse was to escape . . . but we were so hemmed in we had to fight. After that I lived in peace, but the government would not let me alone. I was not allowed to remain quiet. I was tired of fighting . . . They tried to confine me..and a soldier ran his bayonet into me. I have spoken.”
(Avram) Noam Chomsky (1928-)Linquistic Scholar, Political Philosopher and Author
“For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade.”
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
“In every society, there will emerge a caste of propagandists who labor to disguise the obvious, to conceal the actual workings of power, and to spin a web of mythical goals and purposes, utterly benign, that allegedly guide national policy. A typical thesis of the propaganda system is that ‘the nation’ is guided by certain ideals and principles, all of them noble radical priorities.”
“If we hope to do something serious to avert nuclear catastrophe, we must be willing to face certain additional questions. We must inquire into the domestic factors that drive the Pentagon system. U.S. planners have turned to military Keynesianism as a device of economic management. The Pentagon system has come to serve as the state sector of the economy, offering a guaranteed market for high technology production, subsidizing industrial research, and in general, serving as a system of industrial policy planning. In fact, every advanced industrial economy has a substantial component of state coordination and planning, and as a number of commentators have observed, the Pentagon system in the U.S. is rather similar in its functioning to such agencies as the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in Japan. There is, however, a crucial difference, since MITI is oriented towards commercial sales whereas our system of state planning is oriented toward military production, in effect, the production of high technology waste.”
“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.”
“If the left is understood to include ‘Bolshevism,’ then I would flatly dissociate myself from the left.”
“The ‘conservatives’ who are calling for an end to school lunches for hungry children are also demanding an increase in the budget for the Pentagon, which was established in the late 1940s in its current form because--as the business press was kind enough to tell us--high tech industry cannot survive in a ‘pure, competitive, unsubsidized, ‘free enterprise’ economy,’ and the government must be its “saviour.’”
(Avram) Noam Chomsky (1928-)Linquistic Scholar, Political Philosopher and Author
“People who believe in a better way of life know that the way we live now is criminal. Denial of freedoms, death by starvation and exploitation, denigration of people’s capabilities everywhere. If you see that these outcomes are socially produced, then you understand that every person who dies as a result was effectively murdered. Once you accept the possibility of attaining a humanist alternative, you have to be a terrible hypocrite, coward or cynic to live passively with the contrast beteween what is and what could be.”
“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”
“If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged.”
“There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change--and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future.”
Sir Winston L. S. Churchill (1874-1965)British Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, First Lord of the Admiralty
Author and 1953 Nobel Prize-Winner in Literature
“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
“If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.”
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
“I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good. . . and it would spread a lively terror. . . . ”
“. . . we are not a young people with an innocent record and a scanty inheritance. we have engrossed to ourselves . . . an altogether disproportionate share of the wealth and traffic of the world. We have got all we want in territory, and our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions, mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us.”
“Our whole nation must be organized, must be socialized if you like the word.”
“One may dislike Hitler’ system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”
“The story of the human race is war.”
“No legislation at present in view interests the democracy. All their minds are turning more and more to the social and economic issue. This revolution is irresistible. They will not tolerate the existing system by which wealth is acquired, shared and employed. . . . They will set their faces like flint against the money power—heir of all other powers and tyrannies overthrown—and its obvious injustices. And this theoretical repulsion will ultimately extend to any party associated in maintaining the status quo. . . . minimum standards of wages and comfort, insurance in some effective form or other against sickness, unemployment, old age, these are the questions and the only questions by which parties are going to live in the future. Woe to Liberalism, if they slip through its fingers.”
“The president [Franklin Roosevelt] made it clear that he would look for an incident which would justify him in opening hostilities.”
“A lie is half-way around the world before truth even puts on its boots.”
“Our power placed us above the rest.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator
“The more laws, the less justice.”
“An unjust peace is better than a just war.”
“Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.”
“In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.”
“Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.”
“Laws are inoperative in war.”
“Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.”
“Nature abhors annihilation.”
“The budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.”
“Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.”
“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”
“The sinews of war are infinite money.”
“I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.”
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)35th President of the United States, U.S. Congressman
“Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”
“But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.”
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was that things were as bad as we’d been saying they were.”
“Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people.”
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”
“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.”
“The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
“The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.”
Joseph [Heinmot Tooyalaket] (1840-1904)Native American Chief of the Nez Perce
“If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. . . . Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it . . . . Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade . . . where I choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)3rd President of the United States, Minister to France, U.S. Vice President,
Delegate to the Continental Congress, Author,Architect, Inventor, and Political Philosopher
“Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.”
“I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.”
“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.”
“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every
change of ministers (administrations), too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.”
“Power is not alluring to pure minds.”
“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
“Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.”
“It is reasonable that every one who asks justice should do justice.”
“May it [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world what I believe will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing man to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition has persuaded them to bind
themselves, and to assume the blessings of security and self-government.”
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)3rd President of the United States, Minister to France, U.S. Vice President,
Delegate to the Continental Congress, Author,Architect, Inventor, and Political Philosopher
“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.”
“Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
“When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.”
“If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people in England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers.”
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.”
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)16th U.S. President, U.S. Congressman
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races--that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
“Send them [freed black slaves] to Liberia, to their own native land. But free them and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit this.”
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right--a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.” [1848]
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
“I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights.”
“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.”
“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” [1860]
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)16th U.S. President, U.S. Congressman
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.” [1862]
“I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank . . . in favor of the internal improvements system [government subsidies for railroad, shipping, and canal-building businesses] and a high protective tariff.” [1832]
“The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion—no using force against, or among the people anywhere.” [First Inaugural Address]
“You [blacks] and we [whites] are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between al,most any other two races . . . . This physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both . . . [and] affords a reason at least why we should be separated . . . . It is better for us both, therefore, to be seperated.” [from “Address on Colonization to a Committee of Colored Men,” Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865, pp. 353-357]
