VERY IMPORTANT FAMOUS QUOTATIONS FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (Compiled on 24 May 2003, And on 11 December 2003) By S. Wolf Britain "All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five continents throughout the coming years an endless struggle is going to be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle which, granted, the former has a thousand times more chances of success than does the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions." -- Albert Camus. "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." ---Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, speaking on his own behalf at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death. "All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true in itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes." Mein Kampf ---Adolf Hitler, fascist dictator of Germany and other countries during WW2. "War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying, losses." "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ---Thomas Jefferson, U.S. founding father, President and statesman. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that." ---Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated American spiritual leader, and human and civil rights activist. "Non-cooperation with injustice is a sacred duty." ---Mahatma Gandhi, assassinated Indian spiritual leader, and human and civil rights activist. "Be the change you wish to see in the world." ---Mahatma Gandhi. "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." ---Albert Einstein, physicist and political commentator. "The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true." ---Albert Enstein. "I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts." ---Abraham Lincoln, assassinated American President, 1861-1865. "The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton." ---Percy Bysshe Shelley, author and poet. "The enormous gap between what U.S. leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology." ---Michael Parenti, political activist and author. "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, political scientist and author. "News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising." ---Former NBC-News president Rubin Frank. "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." ---Richard Salent, Former President of CBS News. "Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the (U.S.) media (and the American people)." ---Noam Chomsky, political scientist, historian and author. "By way of deception, thou shalt do war." ---Motto of the Mossad (Israeli Secret Police, and the equivalent of the Israeli "CIA"). "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws." ---Abraham Lincoln. "The first casualty of war is truth." ---Rudyard Kipling, author. "All warfare is based on deception." The Art Of War ---Sun Tzu, ancient Chinese prophet. "War is a racket." ---The 1933 confession of a U.S. Marine Corps Major General. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence, clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ---H.L. Mencken. "As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads. They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody's supposed to think that. ...Since there's no way to get together with other people who share or reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you feel like an oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side and you don't pay any attention to what's going on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl." ---Noam Chomsky, American linguist, author, and U.S. foreign policy and media critic. "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, None but ourselves can free our minds...." ---Bob Marley (in 'Redemption Song'). "We need a common enemy to unite us." ---Condoleeza Rice, March 2000, now "President" George W. Bush’s National Security Advisor. "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it...." ---General Douglas MacArthur, 1957. "The biggest conspiracy of all is the claim that there are no conspiracies!" ---Michael Rivero, political commentator. "Religion is... useful to persuade men to murder each other for conveniently located lands without having to pay them what the job is worth." ---Michael Rivero. "Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all." ---Michael Rivero. "The history of war is the history of powerful individuals willing to sacrifice thousands upon thousands of other people's lives for personal gains." ---Michael Rivero. "(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands." ---Howard Zinn, historian and author. "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ---George Orwell, writer, author (of 1984, among other great novels), critical thinker, political scientist, and prophet. "Fascism should rightly be called corporatism(,) as it is a merger of state and corporate power...." ---Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy during WW2. "The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations." ---Noam Chomsky, American linguist, author, and US media and foreign policy critic. "The U.S. must hold global power and a monopoly of force. It will then protect the new order while allowing others to pursue their legitimate interests as Washington defines them. The U.S. must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership, or seeking to overturn the established political order, or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role... (for) we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests but also those of our allies or friends. The United States alone will determine what are wrongs, and when they are to be selectively righted." ---From a draft copy of the Pentagon's 1992 budgetary planning guide (written when Dick Cheney, now Vice-President, was Secretary of Defense). "From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company." ---Mr. John J. Maresca, Vice President of International Relations, Unocal Corporation. I repeat: "All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five continents throughout the coming years an endless struggle is going to be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle which, granted, the former has a thousand times more chances of success than does the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions." -- Albert Camus. [Copyright (c) 2003-2004 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by S. Wolf Britain. All rights are reserved.]