“We live in a time — apparently — where we have to justify our existence with data... [and] I think the death of God is ultimately the main reason for that. If you forgot that people have intrinsic value because they are created in the image of God, and they’re [now] just a number, and we have to work to Net Zero, and we need to now see if you add something or take too much, and you have to justify your own existence by quoting scientific studies — I think we’ve gone off the road, man!” — Eva Vlaardingerbroek

“Since each of the three super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life — the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose.” — George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

“Let the Government keep the schools, Church, Press, its milliards of money and millions of armed men transformed into machines: all this apparently terrible organization of brute force is as nothing compared to the consciousness of truth, which surges in the soul of one man who knows the power of truth, which is communicated from him to a second and a third, as one candle lights an innumerable quantity of others. The light needs only to be kindled and, like wax in the face of fire, this organization, which seems so powerful, will melt, and be consumed.” — Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism & Christianity (1894)

“Helen’s was the usual communist argument — no peace or social justice without a preliminary ‘liquidation’ of capitalists, liberals and so forth. As though you could use violent, unjust means and achieve peace and justice! Means determine ends; and must be like the ends proposed. Means intrinsically different from the ends proposed achieve ends like themselves, not like those they were meant to achieve. Violence and war will produce a peace and a social organization having the potentialities of more violence and war. The war to end war resulted, as usual, in a peace essentially like war; the revolution to achieve communism, in a hierarchical state where a minority rules by police methods à la Metternich-Hitler-Mussolini, and where the power to oppress in virtue of being rich is replaced by the power to oppress in virtue of being a member of the oligarchy. Peace and social justice, only obtainable by means that are just and pacific. And people will behave justly and pacifically only if they have trained themselves as individuals to do so, even in circumstances where it would be easier to behave violently and unjustly.” — Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza (1936) https://www.youtube.com/live/lHPq7QkqzG8?si=ehGjyd6BRNhMVv_t

“The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression.” — John F. Kennedy (1963)

“We are being asked to love or to hate one or another country or people. But a few of us are only too well aware of our similarity to our fellow human beings to accept this choice. The right way to love the Russian people, in recognition of what they have never ceased to be — what Tolstoy and Gorky called the world’s leavening — is not to wish upon them the vagaries of power but to spare them a new and terrible bloodletting after all they have suffered in the past. The same is true of the American people and of the unfortunate people of Europe. This is a fundamental truth, but of a kind all too often forgotten in the tumult of the day. Indeed, what we need to resist today is fear and silence and the division of minds and souls that these entail. What we must defend is dialogue and communication worldwide. Servitude, injustice, and falsehood are scourges that interfere with such communication and prevent such dialogue. That is why we must reject them.” — Albert Camus, Neither Victims nor Executioners (1946)

“There is only one decision you need to make: you are either working at your freedom or you are accepting your bondage.” — Robert Adams

“A quarter of a century has past since the book was published. In that time, our world has taken so many steps in the wrong direction that if I were writing today, I would date my story not six hundred years in the future but at the most two hundred.” — Aldous Huxley (1956)

“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” — Luke 17:21 https://www.youtube.com/live/j2AFw6EW1bw?si=qdKIBZBNz_TNdj2A

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Hit Iran now. Hit them hard.” — Lindsey Graham

“If you want to see the fate of democracies, look out the windows.” — Mr. House, Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

“The battle is won when the average American regards a corporate journalist exactly as they regard a tobacco executive.” — Michael Malice

“Personally, I stick to my idea that we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a world.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“After witnessing hundreds of ordinary people submit to the authority in our own experiments, I must conclude that Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine. The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation — a conception of his duties as a subject — and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies. That is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing there jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry our actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” — Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (1974)

“Patriotism is slavery.” — Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism & Christianity (1894)

“One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.” — Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

“If everybody fought for nothing but his own convictions, there wouldn’t be any wars.” — Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace (1869)

“Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.” — George Orwell, 1984 (1949)