Quotes to Change the World

 "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use." - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race, sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.” - Anna Julia Cooper

 “There will always be Americans who will believe whatever the government tells them no matter how many times they know the government has lied to them.” - Paul Craig Roberts

 “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” - Voltaire

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far you can go.” - T.S. Eliot

 "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presupposition...s of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." - Noam Chomsky

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell

"If the billionaires are betting on a deep second dip, the rest of the investment community should be doing more than looking on from the sidelines." - Vince Stanzione

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the tru...th is the greatest enemy of the State." - Joseph Goebbels

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon

"To remain silent when they should protest makes cowards of men." - Thomas Jefferson

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." - James Bovard

"Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship." - Erich Fromm

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: 1.) not going all the way; and 2.) not starting." - Buddha

"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries, to rich people in poor countries." - Douglas Casey

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

"It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind." - Voltaire

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together." - Eugene Ionesco

"It's the most unhappy people who most fear change." - Mignon McLaughlin

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice." - Meister Eckhart

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." - Mark Twain

"What this country needs are more unemployed politicians." - Edward Langley

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." - Mark Twain

"History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again." - Carl Sagan

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw

"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened - that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death. ... "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Everything today has its point, but the art of making yourself count for something the greatest: more is demanded to produce one wise man today, than seven formerly, and more is needed to deal with a single individual in our time, than with a whole people in the past." - Baltasar Gracian

"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian." - Robert Orben

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Inside every older person is a younger person - wondering what the hell happened." - Cora Harvey Armstrong

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you." - Don Marquis

"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself." - Archibald Macleish

"You can tell your banker friends to go to hell." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Reality is whatever refuses to go away after I stop believing in it." - Phillip K. Dick

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is lord" – Machiavelli

"Seeing what's at the end of one's nose requires constant effort." - George Orwell

"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. (you liberate a city by destroying it.) Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests" - Gore Vidal

"If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of government. I do not expect monopoly to restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it." - Woodrow Wilson

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." - Will Rogers

"All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field." - Albert Einstein

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." – Edward R. Murrow

"If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him." - Mark Twain

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire

"Oh well, I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway." - unknown, saying on a button

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers too plainly proves a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." - Thomas Jefferson

“The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.” - Albert Einstein

"Freedom of Press is limited to those who own one." - H.L. Menken

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain

“All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” -- Edmund Burke

“There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.” - Alexis de Tocqueville

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" - Patrick Henry

“When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it." - Joseph Goebbels

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” – Winston Churchill

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." - Henry Kissinger

“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." - Stalin

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free" Goethe

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell, 1984

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” – Mother Theresa

“Thank goodness we don't get all the government we pay for.” Will Rogers

“Men fight for liberty, and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.” – D.H. Lawrence

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” – Mark Twain

“Every one’s quick to blame the alien.” – Aeschylus

“If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.” – Thomas Jefferson

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” – Herbert Spence