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2006 February 10
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"The writer is the Faust of modern society,
the only surviving individualist in a mass age.
To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman." |
"It is the rare fortune of these days
that one may think what one likes
and say what one thinks." |
"The American’s conviction that
he must be able to look any man in the eye
and tell him to go to hell is the very essence
of the free man's way of life." |
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2006 February 09
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"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real." |
"The trouble with most folks
isn't so much their ignorance,
as knowing so many things
that ain't so." |
"The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines
is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust." |
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2006 February 08
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"The ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them." |
"But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs." |
"A radical is one who speaks the truth." |
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2006 February 07
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"A people are free in proportion as they form their own opinions." |
"For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be
no more urgent task than to come to understand the
mechanisms and practices of indoctrination.
These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies,
much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom'
to which we are subjected and which all too often
we serve as willing or unwitting instruments." |
"Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent." |
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2006 February 06
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"Half the work that is done in this world
is to make things appear what they are not." |
"Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can." |
"Formerly no one was allowed to think freely;
now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more.
Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think,
and this they consider freedom." |
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