Erik Heter > Erik's Quotes

“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”
― Albert Camus

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”
― C. S. Lewis

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
― Milton Friedman

“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
― Thomas Paine

“Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant,”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Chesterton Reader: 21 Works in One Volume (Unexpurgated Edition)

“Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones. ”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli

“I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”
― Machiavelli Niccolo

“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, Man and Superman

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

“If your opponent is of choleric temper,  seek to irritate him.  Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”
― Sun-Tzu, A Arte da Guerra

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
― Milton Friedman

“The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both”
― Milton Friedman

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I hope you remember that if you encounter an obstacle on the road, don’t think of it as an obstacle at all… think of it as a challenge to find a new path on the road less traveled.”
― Hyeonseo Lee, The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story