Thoughts For Today
- Collected by Wes Penre for
Illuminati News
Archives:
2004:
April,
May; June,
July, Aug,
Sep,
Oct.
August 2004:
August 31, 2004
"The world is a dangerous place to live,
not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do
anything about it." -
Albert Einstein
August 30, 2004
War: first, one hopes to win; then one
expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in
the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost. :
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
*
Throughout history, it has been the
inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should
have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most;
that has made it possible for evil to triumph:
Haile Selassie
August 29, 2004
" ... the United States, for
generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about
military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by
the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by
counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions
in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the
public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and
economic interests are still protected in secret. ":
Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author
*
Our men . . . have killed to exterminate
men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected
people from lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to
"make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and
peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them on a bridge and shot
them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples
to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.":
Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila [Philippines]
correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines
*
"The essence of oligarchical rule is not
father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a
certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can
nominate its successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the
hierarchical structure remains always the same.":
George Orwell, 1984
August 27, 2004
They have always taught and trained you
to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves
slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the
people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly
appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people:
Eugene Debs
*
One of the saddest lessons of history is
this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of
the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The
bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to
ourselves -- that we've been so credulous:
Carl Sagan
August 19, 2004
Why is this man in the White House? The
majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this
morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such
as this:
Lt Gen William Boykin, speaking of G. W. Bush, New York Times, 17 October
2003
*
God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable
faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany.
Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler
*
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him,
believing that he has the gods on his side:
Aristotle
*
If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - just so long
as I'm the dictator.
George W. Bush, 18 December 2000
*
International law? I better call my lawyer; he didn't bring that up to me;
George W. Bush, 12 December 2003
August 18, 2004
In the eyes of empire builders men are
not men but instruments:
Napoleon Bonaparte: French Emperor (1769-1821)
*
The government, which was designed for
the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the
special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of
democracy:
Woodrow T. Wilson: 28th president of the United States 1856-1924
August 17, 2004
Truth resides in every human heart, and
one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no
one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth:
Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
*
Without seeking, truth cannot be known
at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor
in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground
for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed,
but not without stern labor of his own:
John Ruskin
August 16, 2004
"So let us regard this as settled: what
is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make
some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing
that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
*
Never give in except to convictions of
honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently
overwhelming might of the enemy:
Sir Winston Churchill.
*
So long as the people do not care to
exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are
active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods,
religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men:
François Marie Arouet (1694-1778)
August 15, 2004
The dangerous patriot: "The one who
drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is
a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud
and bellicose form of patriotism . . . which identifies numerous enemies who can
only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor
with military victory."
Marine Corps, Colonel James A. Donovan
*
Justice is conscience, not a personal
conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly
recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of
justice:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
August 13, 2004
"War paralyzes your courage and deadens
the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you
are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and
die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind
obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and
irresponsible murder." :
Alexander Berkman
*
"COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled
by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing
to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or
into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards'
are to be contrasted with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend
over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not
understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill
simply because they are ordered to do so-all to the howling approval of the
all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed 'courageous.'" :
Chaz Bufe
August 10, 2004
Nations have recently been led to borrow
billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably,
no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our
choice; we cannot have both.
Abraham Flexner
August 9, 2004
Until lions have their historians, tales
of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters:
African Proverb
*
My kind of loyalty was to one's country,
not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the
substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care
for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing,
and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to
protect the body from winter, disease, and death:
Mark Twain
August 7, 2004
The evils of government are directly
proportional to the tolerance of the people:
Frank Kent
*
Freedom had been hunted round the globe;
reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid
to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and
all it wants, is the liberty of appearing: Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
*
I am done with great things and big
things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible
molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through
the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of
water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's
pride: William James
*
"The necessity of the times, more than
ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and
perseverance. Let us remember that `if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon
our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' it is a very
serious consideration...that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of
the event." :
Samuel Adams, speech in Boston, 1771.
August 5, 2004
Behind the ostensible government sits
enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no
responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul
the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first
task of the statesmanship of the day":
Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906
August 4, 2004
I destroy my enemies when I make them my
friends:
Abraham Lincoln
*
The belief in the possibility of a short
decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human
illusions:
Robert Lynd (1879-1949), Anglo-Irish essayist, journalist
August 3, 2004
Only a free and unrestrained press can
effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the
responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the
government from deceiving the people:
Black Hugo L.
*
As I watch government at all levels
daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government
largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or
actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom:
Lyn Nofziger
*
Those in possession of absolute power
can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie
and make their lies come true:
Eric Hoffer
August 1, 2004
The propagandist's
purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people
are human:
Aldous Huxley
*
Because we fear the
responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the
mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of
Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not
to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions
continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us:
Butler D. Shaffer
Updated/Revised:
Saturday, October 02, 2004 10:06:46 -0700
