Notable Quotable 276

May 21, 2024

In a world such as this, where every freedom is being relinquished, where every aspect of life is being controlled, where every state threat is a lie, where every truth is avoided; what will become of man? Power and control over large populations can only be achieved over time, and initially in smaller steps, but as the progression of tyranny consumes the majority, extreme force will be more easily accepted. All totalitarian systems rely on voluntary servitude in order to exist, because there are so many more of us than them. Once this state of willing cowardice and indifference claims the population like a ‘virus,’ this mass sickness of society will consume itself, and all that will remain will be a life of slavery and misery; due to dependence on the very masters who brought about the plot to control the people.

- Gary D. Barnett, ‘What Will You Do When There Is No Food’

The mob has always behaved in this way—eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured.

- Ètienne de La Boétie

Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.

- Socrates

An anarchist is not someone who favors chaos but someone who favors the total liberation of the world through the abolition of government, and all other forms of oppressive authority, to be replaced by any number of other social arrangements, proven or utopian.

- Peter Gelderloos

Is anarchy desirable? Well, Who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it.

- Johann Most

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The science of mine and thine—the science of justice—is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot say, without infringing the rights of any other person. It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace; since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other.

- Lysander Spooner, ‘Natural Law or the Science of Justice’

If I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in religion, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry on the meaningless flux of atoms... I cannot understand how the thought of minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in trees.

- C.S. Lewis

When authority comes from the people it is vacillating; when it comes from God it is steadfast. It is either beyond all question, or it is no authority at all. Such is the lesson of history.

- Honoré de Balzac

Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments.

- Bethenny Frankel

Perhaps the most valuable thing the "Great American Experiment" accomplished was to demonstrate that "limited government" is impossible. There cannot be a master who answers to his slaves.

- Larken Rose