Bakunin

“I have a foreboding of America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time–when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all of the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; with our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

And when the dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites now down to 10 seconds or less, lowest-common-denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Just as I was leaving the hospital, I saw a soldier sitting on a box near the dressing station. I stopped and said to him, “What is the matter with you, boy?” He said, “Nothing; I just can’t take it.” I asked what he meant. He said, “I just can’t take being shot at.” I said, “You mean that you are malingering here?” He burst  into  tears and I immediately saw that he was an hysterical case.   I, therefore, slapped him across the face with my glove and told him to get up, join his unit, and make a man  of himself, which he did. Actually, at the time he was absent without leave.”
― George S. Patton Jr., War As I Knew It

“when you know that your practices are actually changing your brain, you’re more likely to keep doing them.”
― Rick Hanson, Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness

“They don’t even have a modern government. It’s the worst government in any state. The laziest. It does nothing—outside of keeping law courts and a police department. It doesn’t do anything for the people. It doesn’t help anybody.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged