Notable Quotable 222

Joel Walbert

Mar 06, 2024

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The prefrontal cortex, which hosts the ‘logical’ part of the brain, comes second in the process of reading the news.

We are vulnerable to manipulation by those who appeal to our emotions with the intent to pursue their own agendas.

- Nayef R.F. Al-Rodhan

Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say...

'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my fully moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.'

- George Bernard Shaw

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. We must, therefore, be on our guard against extremists who urge us to adopt police state measures. Such persons advocate breaking down the guarantees of the Bill of Rights in order to get at the communists. They forget that if the Bill of Rights were to be broken down, all groups, even the most conservative, would be in danger from the arbitrary power of government.

- Harry S. Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States (August 8, 1950)

Capitalism is not an 'ism'. It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism', because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions the mutually agree to.

- Thomas Sowell

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognise truth, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.

When he no longer has respect, he loses love and, and in order to divert himself, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky