Notable Quotable #19

Sep 17, 2022

“What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.”

- Aldous Huxley

“Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements, the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.”

- Étienne de La Boétie

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

- Frank Herbert

“Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.”

- Norman Mailer

“Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.”

- Henry Emerson Fosdick

“It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

- Bertrand Russell

“The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.”

- Kahlil Gibran

“Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.”

- Chuang-tzu

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”

- Robert F. Kennedy