"None are more helplessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
- Johann W. Von Goethe
* * *
"I certainly could educate a child by putting an electrode in the lateral hypothalamus. ... I can grossly change his behavior."
- Dr. Karl Priram, director of the Neuropsychology Research Laboratory at Stanford University
* * *
"Too many contemporary neuro- and behavioral-scientists seem committed to a narrow, unrealistic view of human social behavior.
They focus mainly on the possibility of controling behavior. If this continues, psychotechnology will increasingly become
a favorite tool of social and political repression."
- Professor Stephan Chorover, Psychology Today, October 1973
* * *
"[M]ind control is originally established when the victim is a child under six years old. During this formative stage of
development, perpetrating cult members systematically combine dissociation-enhancing drugs, pain, sexual assault, terror,
and other forms of psychological abuse in such a way that the child dissociates the intolerable traumatic experience."
- Dr. Catherine Gould
* * *
"[W]herever it [the hidden professional body of the mind control fraternity] operated internationally, together with the
secret police, was to preserve the secrecy of mind control, since they could systematically certify any person who insisted
that he or she had been subjected to such abuse. Now, the conviction of being externally-controlled, of being mind-read or
subjected to long-term experimentation with radio-signals was due to the psychoses often referred to as persecution mania,
paranoia or schizophrenia."
- Mediaeko (Swedish investigative group)
* * *
"A Method for Remote Control of Electrical Stimulation of the Nervous System."
- Title of monograph published by Drs. Chaffee and Light, 1934
* * *
"[A]t a distance of one or more rooms and under conditions where the participant would not know or suspect that she would
be experimented with.... One such experiment was carried out in a park at a distance,... [and] a post-hypnotic mental
suggestion to go to sleep was complied with within a minute."
- Dr. I.F. Tomashevsky, Critical Evaluation of the Hypnogenic Method
* * *
"Eventually - say by A.D. 2000 - perhaps all this depth manipulation of the psychological variety will seem amusingly
old- fashioned. By then perhaps the biophysicists will take over with 'biocontrol,' which is depth persuasion carried to
its ultimate. Biocontrol is the new science of controlling mental processes, emotional reactions, and sense perceptions by
bio-electrical signals."
- Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1958
* * *
"The ultimate achievement of biocontrol may be the control of man himself.... The controlled subjects would never be
permitted to think as individuals. A few months after birth, a surgeon would equip each child with a socket mounted under
the scalp and electrodes reaching selected areas of brain tissue.... sensory perceptions and muscular activity could be
either modified or completely controlled by bioelectric signals radiating from state-controlled transmitters."
- Curtiss Shafer (electrical engineer, Norden-Ketay Corporation), Speech to the National Electronics Conference in Chicago, 1956
* * *
"The clandestine operator... is trained to believe you can't count on the honesty of your agent to do exactly what you want,
or to report accurately unless you own him body and soul."
- Richard Helms
* * *
"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of
making people love their servitude, and producing... a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that
people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted
from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods."
- Aldous Huxley, 1959
* * *
"It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper in a poor devil's eyes than to go about in the sun
hunting up evidence."
- Sir James Stephans, 1883
* * *
"If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind is controllable - what then?"
- George Orwell, in 1984, 1948
* * *
"It is possible that a certain amount of brain damage is of theraputic value."
- Dr. Paul Hoch, 1948
* * *
"To hope that the power that is being made available by the behavioral sciences will be exercised by the scientists, or by
a benevolent group, seems to me to be a hope little supported by either recent or distant history. It seems far more likely
that behavioral scientists, holding their present attitudes, will be in the position of the German rockets scientists
specializing in guided missiles. First they worked devotedly for Hitler to destroy the USSR and the United States. Now,
dependind on who captured them they work devotedly for the USSR in the interest of destroying the United States, or devotedly
for the United States in the interest of destroying the USSR. If behavioral scientists are concerned soley with advancing
their science, it seems most probable that they will serve the purpose of whatever group has the power."
- Carl Rogers, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, 1961
* * *
"If the scientist do what they have laid out for themselves, men will become manageable ants."
- Adolf A. Berle, former Assistant Secretary of State and Chairman of the New York Liberal Party, Diary entry
* * *
"If you got ahold of a directory for the American Psychiatric Association in around 1956 or 1957, you'll be surprised to
find that an enormous percentage of the individuals listed are foreign-born. Mostly they came out of Germany and Eastern
Europe in a big wave. They were called 'technical specialists,' but really they were psychiatrists. They went into jobs at
universties mostly - but many were working on these 'unconventional' mind control programs for U.S. intelligence....
These would go to people like Dr. Cameron in Canada."
- Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, former Pentagon liaison to the CIA, 1992
* * *
"[S]cience has developed a new electrical methodology for the study and control of cerebral function in animals and humans."
- Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado, lecture on the evolution of the brain at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, May 6, 1965
* * *
"When a part of your brain recieves a tiny electrical impulse from outside sources, such as vision, hearing, etc., an
emotion is produced - anger at the sight of a gang of boys beating an old woman, for example. The same emotions of anger
can be created by artificial radio signals sent to your brain by a controller. You could instantly feel the same white hot
anger without any apparent reason."
- Modern People magazine, 1975
* * *
"Cybernetics can be used in molding a child's character, the inculcation of knowledge and techniques, the massing of
experience, the establishment of social behavior patterns... all functions which can be summarized as control of the growth
processes of the individual."
- Richard Helms, memo to the Warren Commission, 1964
* * *
"The official Soviet newspaper Izvestia said that high-frequency radio waves used to power British eavesdropping devices
may have killed two Soviet citizens in London. In an article headlined 'Rays Bring Death,' the newspaper said microwave
radiation was used to control sophisticated listening devices implanted in the walls of the diplomatic compound in London....
A senior British Foreign Office official denied any government connection with the deaths."
- News Brief, Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1989
* * *
"Dr. Diamond was wrong in testifying that the evidence for psychosis was obtained when Sirhan was under hypnosis. The fact
is, paranoid schizophrenics are almost impossible to hypnotize. Psychotics in general are among the poorest subjects for
hypnosis. They cannot concentrate, they do not follow instructions and basically do not trust.... That Sirhan was easy to
hypnotize... proves he was not a paranoid schizophrenic."
- Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas, senior psychologist of the California prison system, March 9, 1973
* * *
Sirhan: "Practice, practice, practice..."
Dr. Diamond: "Practice what?"
Sirhan: "Mind control, mind control, mind control, mind control..."
- transcript of Dr. Diamond's questioning of Sirhan Sirhan under hypnosis
* * *
"The transmitter-reinforcer utilizes space age technology to send accurate readings on the patient's condition to a computer,
which digests the data. The computer can monitor many patients simultaneously. If a patient needs a dose of aversion treatment,
the computer acts as controller, delivering a tone signal or shock.... One study suggests that radio transmitter receivers
should be implanted into the brains of patients to broadcast information to a computer which could monitor and control the
patients' behavior."
- Ford Rowan, Technospies: The Secret Network That Spies on You, 1978
* * *
"In this investigation it will be shown that the spoken word of the hypnotist may also be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic
energy directly into the subconscious parts of the human brain... without employing any technical devices for receiving or
transcoding the messages and without the person exposed to such influence having a chance to control the information input."
- Dr. J.F. Shapitz, 1974
* * *
"Can the human mind be short-circuited or even destroyed by extremely low-frequency radio waves? Preposterous as such an
idea may seem, scientists on both sides of the Iron Curtain have been conducting secret tests. Reputable scientists say
they could be developed into yet another grisly weapon of mass destruction.... This interference could extend to 'switching
off' the brain's vital functions - that is, killing the targeted victims."
- Jack Anderson, July 1985
* * *
"Over the past decade more than 15,000 people worldwide have had electronic components implanted into their brains. In a
procedure confined until recently to the fantasies of science fiction, microchips are now being routinely placed beneath
the skull into brain stems. In many cases, these devices are connected to platinum wires, which are then fused and buried
in the brain."
- Simon Davies, "Bionic Man Comes of Age," the London Times, October 17, 1994
* * *
"We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind.
Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. The individual may think that the most important
reality is his own existance, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does
not have the right to develop his own mind. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be
controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."
- Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado, Director of Neuropsychiatry Yale University Medical School, Congressional Record,
No. 26 vol. 118, February 24, 1974
* * *
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
- Gen. George Pattton
* * *
"To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see everyday, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform."
- Theodore H White
* * *
"Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order!
Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control."
- Denis Diderot, 1796
* * *
"If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live
under tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
- Seneca
* * *
"Another poll revealed that 'faith in God is the most important part of American's lives.'
Forty percent 'said they valued their relationship with God above all else';
29 percent chose 'good health' and 21 percent 'happy marriage.'
Satisfying work was chosen by 5 percent, respect of people in the community by 2 percent.
That this world might offer basic features of a human existence is hardly to be contemplated.
These are the kinds of results one might find in a shattered peasant society."
- Noam Chomsky
* * *
"Seeing that the religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences,
I feel impelled to reiterate my demands for justice, liberty, and equality in the Church as well as the State."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
* * *
"As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities."
- Voltaire
* * *
"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear."
- J. Krishnamurti
* * *
"What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes."
- Edward Sapir
* * *
"Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their
terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as 'conceptual necessities,’ etc. The
road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors. It is therefore not just an idle game
to exercise our ability to analyze familiar concepts, and to demonstrate the conditions on which this justification of
their usefulness depends."
- Albert Einstein
* * *
"Woe betide those who seek to save themselves the pain of mental building by inhabiting dead men’s minds."
- G.D.H. Cole
* * *
"A man who cannot reason is a fool, a man who will not reason is a bigot, and a man who dare not reason is a slave."
- William Drummond
* * *
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
* * *
"To know and not to do is not to know"
- Chinese saying
* * *
"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
* * *
"Hierarchies make some people dependent on others, blame the dependent for their dependency, and then use that dependency
as a justification for further exercise of authority."
- Martha Ackelsberg
* * *
"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a
disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to
argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie ... It is pointed out that
all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems
to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one's senses is simply vulgar philistinism.
A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought,
in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded
by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist."
- George Orwell
* * *
"All communities divide themselves into the many and the few.
The first are rich and well born; the other the mass of the people.
The voice of the people has been said to be voice of God;
and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact.
The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.
Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government.
They will check the unsteadiness of the second..."
- Alexander Hamilton
* * *
"The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
* * *
"American politics are deeply contradictory of course, but anti-intellectualism . . . is the common strain. This includes a
deep suspicion of anything that isn't simple, fundamental, traditional, down-to-earth and 'American' in the ideological
sense, and can be exploited easily by demagogues and cynical politicians..."
- Edward Said
* * *
"Freedom is about authority.
Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion
about what you do."
- NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
* * *
"There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act,
until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it...."
- Mark Twain
* * *
"So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary and that everything which is usual appears natural"
- John Stuart Mill
* * *
"A leader is best
When people barely know that he exists,
Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
Worst when they despise him.
`Fail to honor people,
They fail to honor you;'
But of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will all say, `We did this ourselves.'"
- Lao Tzu
* * *
"Once upon a time there was a magnet, and in its close neighborhood lived some steel filings.
One day two or three filings felt a sudden desire to go and visit the magnet,
and they began to talk of what a pleasant thing it would be to do.
Other filings nearby overheard their conversation, and they, too, became infected with the same desire.
Still others joined them, till at last all the filings began to discuss the matter,
and more and more their vague desire grew into an impulse.
'Why not go today?' said some of them; but others were of the opinion that it would be better to wait until tomorrow.
Meanwhile, without their having noticed it, they had been involuntarily moving nearer to the magnet,
which lay there quite still, apparently taking no heed of them.
And so they went on discussing, all the time insensibly drawing nearer to their neighbor;
and the more they talked, the more they felt the impulse growing stronger,
till the more impatient ones declared that they would go that day, whatever the rest did.
Some were heard to say that it was their duty to visit the magnet, and that they ought to have gone long ago.
And, while they talked, they moved always nearer and nearer, without realizing they had moved.
Then, at last, the impatient ones prevailed, and, with one irresistible impulse, the whole body cried out,
'There is no use waiting. We will go today. We will go now. We will go at once.'
And then in one unanimous mass they swept along, and in another moment were clinging fast to the magnet on every side.
Then the magnet smiled—for the steel filings had no doubt at all but that they were paying that visit on their own free will."
- Oscar Wilde
* * *
"It was too successful. What were we going to do with the supervisors - the managers? We didn't need them anymore.
Management decided that it didn't want operators that qualified.
The employees' newly revealed ability to carry more responsibility was too great a threat to the established way of doing
things and to established power patterns."
- Patrick Michael Rooney, quoting a Polaroid official after a participation project was stopped
* * *
"From the social point of view, the educational systems are oriented to maintaining the existing social and economic
structures instead of transforming them."
- Wilhelm von Humboldt
* * *
"Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns somersaults when there is no whip."
- George Orwell
* * *
"The most ingenious men are now agreed, that [universities] are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and
pedantry."
- George Berkeley, Alciphron, in "Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher", The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (1948-1957)
* * *
"When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic
disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a
game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to
resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard."
- Adrienne Rich
* * *
"That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with
knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened
and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment
at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized
citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of
politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everwhere else."
- H. L. Mencken
* * *
"Disciples do own unto masters only a temporary belief and a suspension of their own judgement until they be fully
instructed, and not an absolute resignation or perpetual captivity."
- Francis Bacon
* * *
As long as someone else controls your history the truth shall remain just a mystery.
- Ben Harper
* * *
I know that there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.
- Mother Jones
* * *
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair
* * *
"The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments ...
the man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps,
always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding ...
and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to be ...
But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the laboring poor,
that is, the great body of people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes pains to prevent it."
- Adam Smith
* * *
1. Let Jesus save you.
2. Come out of your blanket, cut your hair, and dress like a white man.
3. Have a Christian family with one wife for life only.
4. Live in a house like your white brother. Work hard and wash often.
5. Learn the value of a hard-earned dollar. Do not waste your money on giveaways. Be punctual.
6. Believe that property and wealth are signs of divine approval.
7. Keep away from saloons and strong spirits.
8. Speak the language of your white brother. Send your children to school to do likewise.
9. Go to church often and regularly.
10. Do not go to Indian dances or to the medicine men.
- from a wall poster, given to a Lakota Sioux student in a Christian missionary boarding school.
- Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman (1991)
* * *
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
- Steven Biko, 1971
* * *
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot,
therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
- Frank Herbert
* * *
"....in the United States, alone among the great nations of history, there is a right way to think and a wrong way to think
in everything...in the most trivial matters of everyday life."
- H. L. Mencken
* * *
"Let no one believe ... that the many are so exhausted by activities dictated by the need for earning a living,
that freedom of thought is useless to them, or even disturbing. Or that they can best be activated by the diffusion
of principles handed down from on high, while their freedom to think and to investigate is restricted."
- Wilhelm Von Humboldt
* * *
"Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy
of individuals as the citizen in a democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of self-interest
and a denial of the public good. The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that
matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't."
- John Ralston Saul
* * *
"More generally, people have little specific knowledge of what is happening around them.
An academic study that appeared right before the presidential election reports that less than 30 percent of the population
was aware of the positions of the candidates on major issues, though 86 percent knew the name of George Bush's dog.
The general thrust of propaganda gets through, however.
When asked to identify the largest element of the federal budget, less than 1/4 give the correct answer:
military spending.
Almost half select foreign aid, which barely exists;
the second choice is welfare, chosen by 1/3 of the population,
who also far overestimate the proportion that goes to Blacks and to child support.
And though the question was not asked, virtually none are likely to be aware that
`defense spending' is in large measure welfare for the rich.
Another result of the study is that more educated sectors are more ignorant --
not surprising, since they are the main targets of indoctrination.
Bush supporters, who are the best educated, scored lowest overall."
- Noam Chomsky
* * *
"Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment.
Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk."
- Bertolt Brecht
* * *
"The familiar notion of planning is that done by experts, with scientific knowledge.
We have seen the results of that rational planning: tower blocks, food additives, valium--the list of horrors is endless."
- Sheila Rowbotham
* * *
"Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social
behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of social
organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may
ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each
other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate."
- Albert Einstein
* * *
"...The Director General invites you to examine the planisphere hanging on the wall. The varied color scheme indicates:
1) the countries where all books are systematically confiscated
2) the countries where only books published or approved by the State may circulate
3) the countries where existing censorship is crude, approximate, and unpredictable
4) the countries where the censorship is subtle, informed, sensitive to implications and allusions, managed by meticulous and sly intellecuals
5) the countries where there are two networks of dissemination: one legal and one clandestine
6) the countries where there is no censorship because there are no books, but there are many potential readers
7) the countries where there are no books and nobody complains about their absence
8) the countries, finally, in which every day, books are produced for all tastes and all ideas, amid general indifference.
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do..."
- Italo Calvino
* * *
"As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read, the corruption of the schools would not matter so
much if the Press were free. But the Press is not free. As it costs at least a quarter of a million of money to establish
a daily newspaper in London, the newspapers are owned by rich men. And they depend on the advertisements of other rich men.
Editors and journalists who express opinions in print that are opposed to the interests of the rich are dismissed and
replaced by subservient ones."
- George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism (1949)
* * *
"There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the small towns.
You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions,
and if you did you know before hand that they would never appear in print...
The business of the NY journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify,
to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.
You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be 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, the Chief of Staff for the New York Times, 1953
* * *
"The newspapers are the cemeteries of ideas."
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon
* * *
"Distribution, paper supply, and news services had fallen into the hands of powerful groups able and willing to crush out
any... inimical schools of public suggestion. They set about stereotyping the public mind."
- H.G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution, 1933
* * *
"When the mass media in some foreign countries serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of their government,
the result is ludicrous propaganda. When the mass media in our country serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of the
U.S. government, the result is responsible journalism."
- Norman Solomon
* * *
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism.
We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally
capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil
wells or metal mines."
- John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching
* * *
"If only more of today's military personnel would realize that they are
being used by the owning elite's as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad"
- Smedley D. Butler, Major General (U.S. Marine Corps)
* * *
"To think about events realistically, in terms of multiple causations, is hard and emotionally unrewarding.
How much easier, how much more agreeable to trace each effect to a single and, if possible, a personal cause!
To the illusion of understanding will be joined, in this case, the pleasure of hero worship,
if the circumstances are favorable, and the equal, or even greater pleasure, if they are unfavorable,
of persecuting a scapegoat."
- Aldous Huxley, in The Devils of Loudun, 1952
* * *
"The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages.
It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred,
to conceal its own abuses and encroachments."
- Henry Clay, From: Speech in the Senate, March 14, 1834
* * *
"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. Voice or no voice, the peopl 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 then denounce the
peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
- Herman Goering
* * *
"Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it
is in their interests to go to war."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot].
Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond
[i.e., an "extraterrestrial" invasion], whether real or promulgated, that threatened our
very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every
man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the
guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."
- Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991
* * *
Bush's press secretary told reporters after a 1984 debate with his then vice presidential opponent:
"You can say anything you want in a debate, and 80 million people hear it.
If reporters then document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000, or 20,000."
- Holly Sklar
* * *
"...But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart.
Lust of conquest had long ago done its work;
trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home;
multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own
persons.
The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on;
the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose.
There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket."
- Mark Twain
* * *
"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes
his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not
a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."
- H.L. Mencken
* * *
"Contrary to popular belief, conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of
empires.... But what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that
to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist
that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit."
- Mumia Abu-Jamal
* * *
"The most serious threat to democracy is the notion that it has already been achieved."
- Author unknown
* * *
"The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies
[marxism/fascism/socialism vs. democracy/capitalism] to enable them [the Illuminati] to divide larger and larger portions
of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other."
- Myron Fagan
* * *
"It has been said that the hungry cannot hear. In my experience the exact opposite is true, it is the satisfied that cannot
hear."
- anonymous
* * *
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
- Krishnamurti
* * *
"All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed.
Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
- Schopenhauer
* * *
"An hour’s listening disclosed the fanatical intolerance of minds sealed against new ideas, new facts, new feelings, new
attitudes, new hints at ways to live.
They denounced books they had never read, people they had never known, ideas they could never understand, and doctrines
whose names they could not pronounce.
Communism, instead of making them leap forward with fire in their hearts to become masters of ideas and life, had frozen
them at an even lower level of ignorance than had been theirs before they met Communism."
- Richard Wright
* * *
"'Incapacity of the masses.' What a tool for all exploiters and dominators, past present and future, and especially for
the modern aspiring enslavers, whatever their insignia … Nazism, Bolshevism, Fascism, or Communism. 'Incapacity of the
masses.' This is a point on which reactionaries of all colors are in perfect agreement… and this agreement is exceedingly
significant."
- Voline
* * *
"...Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found 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 Douglass, 1849
* * *
"I would like to believe that people have an instinct for freedom, that they really want to control their own affairs.
They don’t want to be pushed around, ordered, oppressed, etc., and they want a chance to do things that make sense,
like constructive work in a way they control, or maybe control together with others.
I don’t know any way to prove this.
It’s really a hope about what human beings are like, a hope that if social structures change sufficiently,
those aspects of human nature will be realized."
- Noam Chomsky
* * *
"The question is not whether universities should seek diversity, but what kind of diversity. It seems that the primary form
of diversity which universities should try to foster is diversity of mind. Such diversity would enrich academic discourse,
widen its parameters, multiply its objects of inquiry, and increase the probability of obscure and unlikely terrain being
investigated. Abroad one typically encounters such diversity of opinion even on basich questions such as how society should
be organized.... By contrast, most American students seem to display striking agreement on all the basic questions of life.
Indeed, they appear to regard a true difference of opinion, based on convictions that are firm and intensely held, as
dangerously dogmatic and an offense against the social etiquette of tolerance. Far from challenging these unconventional
prejudices, college leaders tend to encourage their uncritical continuation."
- Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education, 1991
* * *
"Undercover work calls for the added special ability of an actor, for the officer's life may depend on how
well he assumes his fictitious role. He must be able to step entirely out of his real self and assume the
identity of another person so completely that he lives the character and thinks the character. Possibly
more than any other law enforcement job, undercover work requires mental alertness. The investigator must
forget that he is a police officer and suppress all normal habits of speech and action that might reveal
his true identity. Above all, he must feel certain that he can play the part of the assumed character and
play it well; doubt will betray him."
- Allen Z. Gammage, Your Future in Law Enforcement, 1961
* * *
"In the beginning, we were very brazen. We went into these meetings and talked about humans in terms of pigeons and pecking.
We didn't know a nice euphemistic language for it. But we've learned."
- Dr. Leo Walder, speaking of the development of the field of behavioral modification
* * *
"Reward and reinforcement are not exactly the same for several reasons. What is a reward to one may be anathema to another.
Also, behaviorists are now discovering that behavior may be supported by consequences that no one would consider rewarding.
For example, they have found that under certain circumstances, a monkey will press a lever in order to get a painful
electric shock. Getting the shock will make him press the lever more and more, strange as that may sound. So, the
behaviorists simply define a reinforcer as 'any consequence that increases the probability of the behavior it immediately
follows.'"
- Philip J. Hilts, Behavior Mod, 1974
* * *
"When we license parenthood, behavior mod will be very important. . . . We are going to license parenthood. You know, the
main reason we have never licensed parents is: on what grounds would you license them? . . . But behaviorism will show that
there are principals for raising children."
- Dr. Roger McIntire
* * *
"... the liberty of the Press is called the Palladium of Freedom, which means, in these days, the liberty of
being deceived, swindled, and humbugged by the Press and paying hugely for the deception."
- Mark Twain, 1870
* * *
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act
that could most easily defeat us."
- Justice William O. Douglas
* * *
"I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast
industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence."
- Edward R. Murrow
* * *
"The media I've had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day."
- Michael Deaver, former top aide to President Reagan
* * *
"If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it."
- Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
* * *
"One of the main purposes for the control and power of the Establishment media is to keep the masses deceived and
ignorant about their rights and the oppressions of their rights."
- Charles Weisman
* * *
"...[T]oday we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big
corporations, by religious groups, political groups - and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these
psuedoworlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes I watch my eleven-year-old
daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced
for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by
the child. Maybe its all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even
if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy and reality?
What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing and catching fire. The police are
always good and they always win. Do not ignore that one point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You
should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message there is, Be passive. And -
cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Baretta is a good man and
to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.
So I ask in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with psuedo-realities
manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their
motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole
universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing."
- Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
* * *
"...[T]he matter of defining what is real - that is a serious topic, even a vital one. And in there somewhere is the other
topic, the definition of an authentic human. Because of the bombardment of psuedorealities begins to produce inauthentic
humans very quickly, spurious humans - as fake as the data pressing them from all sides. My two topics are really one topic;
they unite at this point. Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell
them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake
realities and then peddling them to other fake humans. It is just a very large version of Disneyland."
- Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
* * *
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you
can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984. But another way to
control the minds of people is to control their perceptions. If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will
think as you do. Comprehension follows perception. How do you get them to see the reality you see? After all, it is only
one reality out of many. Images are a basic constituent: pictures. That is why the power of TV to influence young minds is
so staggeringly vast. Words and pictures are synchronized. The possibility of total control of the viewer exists, especially
the young viewer. TV viewing is a kind of sleeplearning. An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after half an hour the
brain goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is little eye motion. In addition,
much of the information is graphic and therefore passes into the right hemisphere of the brain, rather than being processed
by the left, where the conscious personality is located. Recent experiments indicate that much of what we see on the TV
screen is received on a subliminal basis. We only imagine that we consciously see what is there. The bulk of the messages
elude our attention; literally, after a few hours of TV watching, we do not know what we have seen. Our memories are
spurious, like our memories of dreams; the blank spaces are filled in retrospectively. And falsified. We have participated
unknowingly in the creation of a spurious reality, and then we obligingly fed it to ourselves. We have colluded in our own
doom."
- Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
* * *
"The sheperd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same."
- Stendhal
* * *
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
- William James
* * *
"Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession
- their ignorance."
- Hendrik Van Loon
* * *
"Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending
not to trust their own judgment."
- Alan Watts
* * *
"We must abandon the prevelant belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant."
- Daniel Boorstin
* * *
"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
- Aldous Huxley
* * *
"It seems fitting in a country where people aspire to two of everything - cars, kids, and homes - we should have two
histories as well. And so we do: a public chronicle, or 'Disney version,' so widely available as to be unavoidable ... and
a second one that remains secret, buried, and unnamed. Lately, Americans have come to suspect the existence of this second
history; the Watergate affair, with all its resonances, and subsequent snippets of CIA malpractices have disinterred a part
of the times."
- Jim Hougan, Spooks: The Haunting of America - The Private Use of Secret Agents, 1978
* * *
"The consumer pays when, without knowing it, he's brainwashed by commercially exploited propaganda techniques developed by
spooks working in psychological-warfare laboratories."
- Jim Hougan, Spooks: The Haunting of America - The Private Use of Secret Agents, 1978
* * *
"Curiously, often a classic manifestation of people who are afflicted with certain psychotic disorders is the irrational
fear that the CIA and FBI is conspiring to harm them. In this case, the CIA involvement is real and the covert nature of
the involvement is not contested."
- Orlikow v. United States (1988)
* * *
"The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am president that is what it will remain. They have a
propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's."
- Harry S. Truman, Time, September 18, 1956
* * *
"Without censorship things can get terribly confusing in the public mind."
- Gen. William C. Westmoreland, Time, April 5, 1982
* * *
"Disinformation is most effective in a very narrow context. ... You take a fraction of reality and expand on it. Its
seldom totally at odds with the facts... Its shaving a piece of reality off."
- Frank Snepp, former CIA agent, 1985
* * *
"There is no need to argue with the masses, slogans are much more effective. Slogans are like strong drinks to people.
The crowd doesn't react like men but like women, who rely on their feelings, rather than on intelligence if any.
Propaganda is a great difficult and noble art, therefore it calls for a genius. The most successful propagandists in
history were Christ, Mohammed and Buddha."
- Joseph Goebbels
* * *
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind."
- George Orwell, Shooting the Elephant, 1950
* * *
"Education is a state-controlled manufacturing of echoes."
- Norman Douglas, How About Europe?, 1930
* * *
"Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social,
in the competition with other groups."
- Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, "Education," 1916
* * *
"As well as having an armoury of tortures at its disposal, the gang also mobilises various techniques of mind control.
One of these is 'brain-saying,' which is a magnetically induced sympathetic surveillance at a distance, a
silent mode of telepathic communication ... 'kiting,' or the capacity to hijack the brain and to implant
thoughts in it beyond the control and resistance of the sufferer... "
- John Haslam, Director of Bethlem Hospital, London, 1810
* * *
"American interest in the hypnosis-EMR interaction was still stron as of 1974, when a researche plan was
filed to develop useful techniques in human volunteers. The experimenter, J.F. Schapitz, stated: 'In this
investigation it will be shown that the spoken word of the hypnotist may also be conveyed by modulated
electromagnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the human brain -- i.e: without employing
any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages and without the person exposed to such
influence having a chance to control the information input consciously.'"
- Robert O. Becker, Nobel Prize nominee, 1985
* * *
"I think the number of Nazi criminals who came here after the war is at least 10,000. I would assume they are
all still here except for those who have died and those who have been deported. The United States was a haven
for Nazi war criminals."
- Neal M. Sher, director of Office of Special Investigations, 1987
* * *
"The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where the interests
are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing."
- Henry Adams, The Letters of Henry Adams
* * *
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may
have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
– Stephen Schneider, environmental activist, in "Discover", Oct. '89
* * *
"Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people
en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion
of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning
people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence."
– Robert Anton Wilson
* * *
" 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 …"
– H. L. Mencken
* * *
"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly
preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic."
– Dresden James
* * *
" People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them."
– George Santayana
* * *
" The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect."
– George Orwell, 1984
* * *
"For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while
marching in the parade."
– Noam Chomsky
* * *
"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
– Adolf Hitler
* * *
"Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such
a way reduces to a minimum one's own need to think."
– Adolf Eichmann, Memoirs written after his 1960 capture by Israel.
* * *
"The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore,
those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
– Dresden James
* * *
"When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty."
– Confucius
* * *
"For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more."
– Gore Vidal
* * *
"The public school system: 'Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism,
encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek
subservience to authority.' "
– Walter Karp, Editor Harper's Magazine
* * *
"How about a chip for everyone, either in their right hand or in their forehead, to make sure no one gets away with
anything? Problem is … while 'they' are keeping track of us, who will be keeping track of 'them'?"
– Cheryl DeJesus
* * *
"Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling
themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves."
– Joseph Sobran, The Myth of 'Limited Government'
* * *
"The most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that
they gain access to the 'best' sources."
– Walter Karp (1934-1989), American Journalist and Political Theorist
* * *
"The majority of Americans get their news and information about what is going on with their government from entities that
are licensed by and subject to punishment at the hands of that very government."
– Neal Boortz
* * *
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
– Stanislaw J. Lec
* * *
"Most people ... aren't just ignorant or stupid: they genuinely prefer government control of their own and their neighbors'
lives. We can hand out flyers for the rest of our lives, publish as many books as we like, make speeches until we're blue
in the face, and most of them aren't going to change their minds. While they disagree among themselves about the details,
authoritarians of one sort or another constitute an overwhelming majority."
– Max Orhai, Liberty Magazine, 6/04, page 23
* * *
"We've been thoroughly trained in government institutions where every day for twelve of our most impressionable years we
took a loyalty oath before starting our work."
- Hal O'Boyle
* * *
“In solitary confinement before his color TV, the citizen is made a part of all that is happening on a planetary scale and impressed with his powerlessness to act on precisely that planetary scale. Closed in upon himself, the citizen is not the yeoman structure that creates the content of the Republic, but simply a photograph in a collage enormously larger than himself.”
- W.I. Thompson, Evil and the World Order, 1975
* * *
“Windows have become a powerful metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed system. The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times. The life practice of windows is that of a decentered self that exists in many worlds, that plays many roles at the same time.”
— Sherry Turkle, “Who Am We?,” Wired, 1995
* * *
“The mind is dealing with the world but is always working on itself. The mind takes materials from the world…”
—Robert Jay Lifton, “Symbolization and Fiction-Making,” 1974
* * *
“The modern mind is an incredible complex of impressions and transformations; and its product is a fabric of meanings that would make the most elaborate dream of the most ambitious tapersty-weaver look like a mat. The warp of that fabric consists of what we call ‘data,’ the signs [signals] to which experience has conditioned us to attend, and upon which we act often without any conscious ideation. The woof is symbolism. Out of signs and symbols we weave our tissue of ‘reality.…’”
—Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 1942/71
* * *
