SELECTED QUOTES ON THE NATURE OF GOVERNANCE, BUSH PUTSCH STYLE
SearchRE,
A friend just sent this via email. I thought the thread might find this meatier than the usual gruel we're served in this political food-fight line.
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Listening to the commentary following George Bush's State of the Union
address, it would appear that many of my fellow Americans believe the
president effectively made his case for going to war with Iraq --- or, at a
minimum, it is clear that this is what we are supposed to believe.
Last night I listened to Mr. Bush with great interest, paying attention to
every word that was spoken. I was not convinced. I listened and was reminded
of the speeches and policies characteristic of a an earlier time and a
previous war.
Pasted immediately below are quotes on the subject of media and propaganda
from the webpage indicated. Following those, are additional quotes selected
from amongst several sources, all of which are attributed to one man.
Following those are a number of my person favorite quotes -- complied
specially for you this morning. I hope you will find at least some amongst
these valuable, helpful, and perhaps inspiring in the times ahead.
-------- begin quoted ---------
korpios.org
from: MEDIA AND PROPAGANDA
"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence
small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these
facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and
must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public
understands..."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 180-181.
"In political matters feeling often decides more correctly than reason."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 173
"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted
to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to.
Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its
purely intellectual level will have to be."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 180
"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless
one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging
attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and
over."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 184
"[Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited
degree at the so-called intellect... The art of propaganda lies in
understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a
psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the
heart of the broad masses."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 180
"[This is the] very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind
of propaganda: a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem
that has to be dealt with."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 182
"The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for
blasé young gentlemen, but to convince. the masses. But the masses are slow
moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to
notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of
times will the masses finally remember them."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 185
||----------Selected quotes from various sources ---------||
||-------- all quotes attributed to Adolf Hilter---------||
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.
We shall not capitulate... no never. We may be destroyed, but if we are, we
shall drag a world with us... a world in flames.
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for
the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily
deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive
simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a
small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed
to tell big lies.
All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that
even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand
it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be
made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the
most wretched sort of life as paradise.
The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing
the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on
a single enemy.
----End of Hitler Quotes-----
**** PERSONALLY SELECTED QUOTES ****
**** FOR THE COMING DAYS ****
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 (adminstrators) too plainly
proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
-Thomas Jefferson
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
The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when
the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the
pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the
tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good
citizen not to be silent. -Charles Eliot Norton
Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it
stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years,
may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American
Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.
-Daniel Webster
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
-Harry S. Truman
The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of
others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.
-Voltaire
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but
the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a
man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
-H.L. Mencken
If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst. -George Washington
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to
the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
- James Madison
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which
should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers
of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of
magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being
effectually checked and restrained by the others. - Thomas Jefferson
In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and
I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the
Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came
for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.
- Reverend Martin Niemoeller
Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of
these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his
property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the
concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his
neck in a cellar. -Rose Wilder Lane
The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.
-Dr. Joseph Mengele
Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and
corporate power. -Benito Mussolini
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint,
but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking
through. - Alexis de Tocqueville
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.... After having thus successively taken each member of the community
in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then
extends its arm over the whole community....The will of man is not
shattered, but softened, bent, and guided.... 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
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending
money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953
"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
"Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence - These are the three
pillars of Western prosperity." - Aldous Huxley
"The illegal we can do right now; the unconstitutional will take a little
longer." -- Henry Kissinger
"Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose... Do
what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be
scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now
is the appointed time." - John Jay Chapman - 1900
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but
because of those who look on and do nothing. -Albert Einstein
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without
action. -Benjamin Disraeli
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do
nothing .-Edmund Burke
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do
only a little. -Edmund Burke
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
-Edward Everett Hale
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. -Elbert Hubbard
You must do the things you think you cannot do. -Eleanor Roosevelt
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people
who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder
and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both.
But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never
has and it never will. -Frederick Douglass
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead
It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for
what we do not do. -Moliere
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work
to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will
be written the history of this generation. - Robert F. Kennedy
"I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how
tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit
without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you
turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself
creates new potential." -Vandana Shiva |
