ThoughtCriminal > ThoughtCriminal's Quotes

“Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.”
― Larken Rose

“No one rules if no one obeys.”
― Lao Tzu

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions. Many times, for instance, I’ve heard people say, "A free market in education is a bad idea because some child somewhere might fall through the cracks," even though in today’s government school, millions of children are falling through the cracks every day.”
― Lawrence W. Reed

“Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly “reforming” their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact they’re always busy “reforming” is an implicit admission that they didn’t get it right the first 50 times.”
― Lawrence W. Reed

“No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.”
― William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

“Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.”
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“he who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind.”
― Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

“We live in a world of constant noise which captures our minds even when we are not aware of it”
― Joost A. M. Meerloo

“What counts in any man is the consistency and integrity of his behavior, and his courage in taking a stand, not his conformity to official dogma.”
― Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

“advertising symbolizes the art of making people dissatisfied with what they have.”
― Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

“The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility.”
― Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

“I'm not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers.
I'm scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be "authority", and so do their bidding, and pay for their empires, and carry out their orders.
I don't care if there's one looney with a stupid moustache. He's not a threat if the people do not believe in "authority".”
― Larken Rose

“The libertarian philosophy doesn't explain the best way to grow a vegetable garden!" Why do some people talk as if there should be one concept or principle which is all you'll ever need to know in order to handle everything in life? Right now the PRIMARY threat to humanity--by a factor of a zillion--is the belief in "authority." And the solution--the ONLY solution--is for people to escape that superstition. Questions like, "But how do we care for the poor?" are 100% logically IRRELEVANT to proving that statism is immoral and destructive. "But gee, if I stop sawing off my toes with this steak knife, how will I balance my checkbook?" Why the hell do people imagine that anarchists have some obligation to explain how every aspect of everyone's life will work, just because they say, "Having a ruling class is immoral and irrational"? When someone tells you to stop advocating evil crap (e.g., statism), they don't suddenly acquire an obligation to explain the whole universe to you, or to guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to anyone ever again.”
― Larken Rose

“In truth, the belief in "government" is a religion, made up of a set of dogmatic teachings, irrational doctrines which fly in the face of both evidence and logic, and which are methodically memorized and repeated by the faithful. Like other religions, the gospel of "government" describes a superhuman, supernatural entity, above mere mortals, which issues commandments to the peasantry, for whom unquestioning obedience is a moral imperative.”
― Larken Rose, The Most Dangerous Superstition

“The truth is that any form of authoritarian control—any type of "government," whether constitutional, democratic, socialist, fascist, or anything else—will result in a set of masters forcibly oppressing a group of slaves. That is what "authority" is—all it ever has been, and all it ever could be, no matter how many layers of euphemisms and pleasant rhetoric are used in an attempt to hide it.”
― Larken Rose, The Most Dangerous Superstition

“Having a Constitutional political party is a little like telling a car-jacker, "You're not allowed to do what you're doing! And if you don't stop it right now, we are going to ask you to order yourself to be nice! And if that doesn't work, we are going to try to elect a new car-jacker, who we hope will tell himself not to steal our cars! ... But at least we're not like those silly utopian anarchist kooks out there who refuse to work within the system for change! Those crazy people say there should be NO car-jackers at all!”
― Larken Rose

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
― Bill Keane

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“We learn from failure, not from success!”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”
― Aldous Huxley

“You don't gain the right to dismiss a subject as "ridiculous" until you've at least looked at the evidence and given it a chance.”
― Mark Devlin, Musical Truth: Exposing the mind-control manipulations of the corporate music industry ... and how to take back our power.

“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, Prejudices: Third Series

“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.”
― H. L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell

“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays