Thoughts For Today
- Collected by Wes Penre for
Illuminati News
Archives:
2004:
April,
May; June,
July,
Aug,
Sep,
Oct.
May 2004
May 31, 2004:
"We have come to be
one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated
Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a
Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the
opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." :
Woodrow Wilson
*
"We must become the
owners, or at any rate the controllers at the source, of at least a proportion
of the oil which we require." :
British Royal Commission, agreeing with Winston
Churchill's policy towards Iraq, 1913
May 29, 2004:
"Our position is that
whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status
quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for
altering those conditions." :
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. American prosecutor at the Nuremberg
trials, in his opening statement to the tribunal
*
Crime Against Peace: A
basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate or wage a war
of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and
assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so is a crime:
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocJac14.htm
*
"It's really not a
number I'm terribly interested in." :
Colin Powell, regarding number of Iraqi troops killed in Gulf War I, New York
Times, 23/3/1991
*
" They know we own
their country. We own their airspace...We dictate the way they live and talk.
And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially
when there's a lot of oil out there we need." :
US Brig. General William Looney (sic), Washington Post, 24/6/1996
May 28, 2004:
"I'm often amazed at the way politicians,
who spend hours poring over opinion poll results in a desperate attempt to
discover what the public thinks, are certain they know precisely what God's
views are on everything.":
Simon Hoggart
*
"Going to church no more makes you a
Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car.":
Garrison Keiler
*
The accumulation of all powers, legislative,
executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and
whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the
very definition of tyranny."
James Madison. Federalist
May 27, 2004:
Do not fear the enemy,
for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the
media, for they will steal your Honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a
nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons
who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way
to the poorhouse:
Mark Twain
*
"In the First
Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have
to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the
governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was
abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.
The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and
inform the people. 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 and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and
foreign shot and shell."
Justice Black. NYT v. US. 403 US 713
*
"Every time anyone
says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think
that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East."
John Sheehan, S.J.
*
"Some explanations of
a crime are not explanations: they're part of the crime.":
Olavo de Cavarlho
*
"The National
Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation
the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic
principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the
foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national
life."
Adolph Hitler, My New World Order, Proclamation to the German Nation at
Berlin, February 1, 1933
May 26, 2004:
It is better to suffer
wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust:
Samuel Johnson
*
The keenest sorrow is
to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities:
Sophocles
*
Nearly all men can
stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power:
Abraham Lincoln
*
Everyone is a prisoner
of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them:
Edward R. Murrow
*
It is curious that
physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare:
Mark Twain
May 25, 2004:
Government is not
reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant
and a fearful master:
George Washington
*
The genius of our
ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning
the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for
which they get nothing in return:
Gore Vidal
*
For in reason, all
government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of
slavery:
Jonathan Swift
*
Here is my first
principle of foreign policy: good government at home:
William Ewart Gladstone
*
Dignity consists not
in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them:
Aristotle
*
It is the duty of
every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his
convictions in political affairs:
Albert Einstein
May 22, 2004:
Our government...
teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the
lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law
unto himself; it invites anarchy:
Louis D. Brandeis
May 21, 2004:
Where is the justice
of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then
itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very
hills?:
Kahlil Gibran
*
Conquered states that
have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held
by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second,
for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow
them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and
to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to
the conqueror:
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
*
In the democracy of
the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor
prerogative in the republic of the grave:
John James Ingalls
May 20, 2004:
Knowledge will forever
govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm
themselves with the power which knowledge gives:
President James Madison
*
When even one American
- who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his
mouth-then all Americans are in peril:
President Harry S. Truman
*
More than an end to
war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal,
inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between
governments:
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (on his quest for a One World Government)
May 18, 2004:
All
truth passes through 3 stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
May 17, 2004:
The victor will never
be asked if he told the truth:
Adolf Hitler
*
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
May 15, 2004:
“There
are no answers – only choices”
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
*
"It is better to light a
candle
than to curse the darkness."
Chinese proverb
*
There is an old
proverb out there about cooking frogs (probably French). It says that if you
throw a live frog into a pot of boiling hot water, you will be unable to cook it
because the shock of the temperature will naturally induce the frog to leap out
of the pot. The secret to cooking frogs is to place them in room temperature
water and then to slowly heat the water. By the time the frog realizes it is
being cooked, it will not have the strength necessary to leap out of the pot. A
similar method is used to erode human freedom across the globe.
*
If those in charge of
our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and
television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power.
They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.":
Howard Zinn, historian and author
*
"If liberty means
anything at all it means the right to tell the people
what they do not want to hear."
George Orwell
*
"The point of public
relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything...
That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan
that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows
what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that
it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you
support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about.":
Noam Chomsky
May 14, 2004:
The most esteemed journalists are
precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the
powerful that they gain access to the 'best' sources".:
Walter Karp
*
"The job of the President is to set the
agenda and the job of the press is to follow the agenda that the leadership
sets.": Lawrence Grossman - longtime head of PBS and NBC News
*
War, we have come to believe, is a
spectator sport. The military and the press ... have turned war into a vast
video arcade game. Its very essence- death - is hidden from public view.":
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for New York Times
*
"Television is altering the meaning of
"being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be
called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It
means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial
information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but
which in fact leads one away from knowing.":
Neil Postman
*
"The corporate grip on opinion in the
United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country
has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much
less dissent.":
Gore Vidal
May 13, 2004:
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
*
Our rulers make the news, but they do
not appear in the news, not as they really are-not as a political class, a
governing establishment, a body of leaders with great and pervasive powers, with
deep, often dark, ambitions. In the American republic the fact of oligarchy is
the most dreaded knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us. By
their subjugation of the press, the political powers in America have conferred
on themselves the greatest of political blessings-Gyges' ring of invisibility.
And they have left the American people more deeply baffled by their own
country's politics than any people on earth. Our public realm lies steeped in
twilight, and we call that twilight news.: Walter Karp
*
Individuals have international duties
which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual
citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace
and humanity from occurring.:
The Nuremberg Tribunal 1945-1946.
*
... 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
May 12, 2004:
I went down on my knees and prayed to
Almighty God for light and guidance . and one night late it came to me this
way.. We could not leave (the Philippines) to themselves--they were unfit for
self-government--and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse
than Spain's was.. There was nothing left for us to do but take them all and
educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.:
President William McKinley
*
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
*
This business of burning human beings
with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting
poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men
home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and
psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love:
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
May 11, 2004:
They that can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
*
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
*
Those who can make you believe
absurdities can make you commit atrocities:
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
May 10, 2004:
What is history, but a fable
agreed upon?
Napoleon Bonaparte
May 8, 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
compared to:
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
May 6, 2004:
Beware of the leader, who
strikes the war drum in order to transfer the citizens into patriotic glow,
patriotism is indeed a double-sided sword. It makes the blood so boldly, like it
constricts the intellect. And if the striking of the war drum reached a fiebrige
height and the blood is cooking and hating, and the intellect is dismissed, the
leader doesn't need to reject the citizens rights. The citizens, cought by
anxiety and blinded through patriotism, will subordinate all their rights to the
leader and this even with happy courage. Why do I know that? I know it, because
this is, what I did. And I am Gajus Julius Cäsar:
Gaius Julius Caesar
*
War is the health of the
State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible
forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in
coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the
larger herd sense:
Randolph Bourne
*
"When you eliminate the impossible,
whatever remains--however improbable--must be the truth."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
May 5, 2004:
Liberty is meaningless
where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That,
of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all
strike down:
Frederick Douglass
May 4, 2004:
Without some form of
censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order
to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the
event:
Walter Lippmann
*
Not every item of news
should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to
make every item of news serve a certain purpose:
Joseph Paul Göbbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
*
No free people can lose
their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the
freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes,
worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents:
Wendell Phillips
May 3, 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
May 2, 2004:
"Ah yes, truth. Funny how everyone is always asking for it but
when they get it they don't believe it because it's not the truth they want to
hear."
Helena Cassadine
*
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth
which men prefer not to hear"
Herbert Sebastien Agar
*
"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
May 1, 2004:
"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere
messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths
that surround it."
John Pilger
Updated/Revised:
Saturday, October 02, 2004 10:04:24 -0700
