Notable Quotable 327

Sep 23, 2024

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

- Frederick Douglass

Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class.

- Giuseppe Prezzolini

To think that we grasp the fullness of life is to say that by holding a mere drop of water in our hands we are able to understand the immensity of the ocean.

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

While the popular understanding of anarchy is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchy is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition then a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organization.

- L. Susan Brown

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

- Socrates

Strike.Me

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All governments, the worst on earth, and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.

- Lysander Spooner

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

- Mark Twain

Your actions are always determined entirely by your own judgment, and your own choices. To try to attribute your behavior to some outside force, such as “authority,” is cowardly and dishonest. You made the choice, and you are responsible. Even if you just stupidly obeyed some self-proclaimed “authority,” you decided to do that.”

- Larken Rose

Hysteria is a chaotic and irrational emotional state caused by seeing how the world really operates.

- Robert Anton Wilson

The irreligious spirit made the philosophy of materialism dominant. The human soul is immortal, while money can only make your short time here a bit more comfortable. The devil taught us that happiness and success is measured by how wealthy a country or person is. He only exalts the splendors of this world and leaves no place for spirituality. He teaches us to become as selfish and ambitious as possible, and to trample one another. He teaches us to solely focus on the goods of this world which are limited and scarce, and yet can never satisfy us. Instead of trying to cultivate love within us which is infinite, he convinces us to only care about ourselves and our short miserable time on earth. He has convinced us that there's no such thing as soul and afterlife, that our suffering here is meaningless and good deeds have little value. He tries to divide us through hatred and strife, instead of trying to unite us through peace and harmony. He desperately tries to make us forget God, or deny his love and power.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate... Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself... It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

- Alexis de Tocqueville