On the issue of human freedom, if you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, that hope is possible, there's a chance for you to contribute to making a better world. That's your choice
Quotes
Noam Chomsky
Silence is the virtue of fools
Francis Bacon
With a multitude of commodities grows the realm of alien things which enslave man
Erich Fromm
The general ethos of the people they have to govern determines the behavior of politicians
T.S. Eliot
That's the genius of our ruling class. They're so brilliant that no one knows they even exist. The political-science professors, perfectly sane men, look at me with wonder when I talk about the ruling class in America. They say, "You are one of those conspiracy theorists. You think there's a headquarters and they get together at the Bohemian Grove and run the United States." Well, they do get together at the Bohemian Grove and do a lot of picking of Secretaries of State, anyway. But they don't have to conspire. They all think alike. It goes back to the way we're raised, the schools we went to--after all, I'm a reluctant member of this group. You don't have to give orders to the editor of The New York Times. He is in place because he will respond to a crisis the way you want him to, as will the President, as will the head of the Chase Manhattan Bank.
Gore Vidal
To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.
Noam Chomsky
There are some things in our world, there are some things in our nation to which I’m proud to be maladjusted, to which I call upon all men of goodwill to be maladjusted until the good society is realized. I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self defeating effects of physical violence
Martin Luther King Jnr
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. ... If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress
Frederick Douglass
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread
Anatole France
Greed and competition are not the result of immutable human temperament; greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the money we are using. We can produce more than enough food to feed everyone, and enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The job of the central banks is to create and maintain this scarcity, and the direct consequence of this is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive
Bernard Lietaer