Scotto

“People succumb to fear, no matter the government. The everyday person doesn’t want war, but it’s remarkably easy to convince them. It’s the government that determines political priorities, and it’s easy to drag people along with you by tapping into that fear. I don’t care if you have a communist mecca, a fascist regime, or a representative democracy, even some monarchy with a gutless parliament. People can always be convinced to turn on one another. All you have to do is convince them that their way of life is being attacked. Denounce all the pacifist liberal bleeding hearts and feel-good heretics, the social outcasts, the educated. Call them elites and snobs. Say they’re out of touch with real patriots. Call these rabble-rousers terrorists. Say their very existence weakens the state. In the end, the government need not do anything to silence dissent. Their neighbors will do it for them.”
― Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade

“Islam is not a kind of person. Islam is an idea. Islam is a religion. And religions are not people. Ideas are not people. All ideas must be attacked all the time, in order to find out what parts of them are true. We must respect people, but that doesn’t mean we have to respect ideas that aren’t true. I don’t even care whether the ideas are dangerous or not. I don’t care if Islam does mean “peace.” I don’t believe Muhammad was any sort of prophet. I don’t believe there are any real prophets. That idea is wrong. And if I say that idea is wrong, that doesn’t mean I have an irrational fear of people who believe that idea. It means that I think the idea is wrong, wrong, wrong.”
― Penn Jillette, Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales

“we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Some of these various sects and denominations are peaceful, but the largest of them—the most successful of them—have been built on the blood, bones, and screams of those who have the effrontery not to bow to their idea of God. The Romans fed Christians to the lions; the Christians dismembered those they deemed to be heretics or sorcerers or witches; Hitler sacrificed the Jews in their millions to the false god of racial purity. Millions have been burned, shot, hung, racked, poisoned, electrocuted, and torn to pieces by dogs . . . all in God’s name.”
― Anonymous