Bertrand

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Self-negation is noble, self-culture is beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared to self-abuse.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Oh! The vile indignity of the human condition! Oh! The undeserving condition of the human cowardice! Go and inquire the grass and the trees. They from themselves produce flowers, leaves and fruits; you from yourself, you produce nits, lice, and worms. They from themselves produce oil, wine, and balm; you from yourself send out mucous, urine, and dung. They from themselves send out the fragrance of sweetness; and you make of yourself an abomination of stench!”
Lothar of Segni, future Innocent III
quoted by Eugenio Garin in his History of Italian Philosophy”
― Innocent III, On the Misery of the Human Condition

“It is not a dead society that we want to revive. We leave that to those who go in for exoticism.”
― Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism