THE DEVIL'S ALLIES - O YE OF NO OPINION.



To all those nice, ordinary, neutral, unquestioning, obedient, balanced,
middle-of-the-road people who don't involve themselves in politics or anything
like that - The passengers of 'democratic' society, whose no-mind inactivity
keeps open the way for oppression and domination by the rich and powerful few:



"Less than fifteen per cent of the people do any original thinking on any
subject... The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think."

(US horticulturist Luther Burbank, 1849-1926.)



"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few
engage in it."

(Henry Ford.)



"Most English people would rather die than think."

(Bertrand Russel.)



"There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labour of
thinking."

(Thomas Edison.)



"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to
think at all."

(Hypatia of Alexandria.)



"Men can live without air for a few minutes, without water for about two weeks,
without food for about two months; and without thought for years on end."

(Kent Ruth.)



"The man who doesn't do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself
and to his fellow men."

(US lawyer Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899).)



"Where apathy is the master, all men are slaves."

(Anonymous.)



"When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by the sign that the
dunces are all in confederacy against him."

(Jonathan Swift.)



"It is dangerous to think... But somebody must take a chance. The monkeys did
who became men, and the monkeys who didn't are still jumping around in the trees
making faces at the monkeys who did."

(US writer Lincoln Steffens.)



"He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares
not, is a slave."

(Scottish historian William Drummond (1585-1640).)



"The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely
nothing."

(Oscar Wilde.)



"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions."

(G.K.Chesterton.)



"Neutral men are the devil's allies."

(US clergyman Edwin Hubbel Chapin.)



"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral
crisis maintain their neutrality."

(Dante Alighieri.)



"Obedience is the great multiplier of evil."

(John Holt.)



"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is
that men may become robots."

(Erich Fromm.)



"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that
men will begin to think like computers."

(Sydney Harris.)



"That one man or ten thousand or ten million men find a dogma acceptable does
not argue for its soundness."

(David Starr Jordan.)



"The field of politics always presents the same struggle. There are the Right
and the Left, and in the middle is the Swamp, The Swamp is made up of
know-nothings, of them who are without ideas, of them who are always with the
majority."

(August Bebel.)



"It is a lie that truth always belongs to the majority! What kind of truths do
the majority rally around? Truths so old that they are positively decrepit with
age. When a truth is hoary with years it is in a fair way to become a lie...

(Henrik Ibsen.)



"Do not be afraid of enemies - at worst they may kill you. Do not be afraid of
friends - at worst they may betray you. Beware of the indifferent - they do not
kill and they do not betray, But it is only by their silent consent that
murder and treachery exist on Earth."

(Bruno Yasensky.)



"Mourn not the dead... But rather mourn the apathetic throng - The cowed and
meek Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong And dare not speak."

(US writer Ralph Chaplin.)



"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our
problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of
the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been
killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all
over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and
cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of
petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country.
That's our problem."

(Howard Zinn.)



"He who moves not forward goes backward."

(Goethe.)



"There is nothing more odious than the majority. It consists of a few powerful
men who lead the way; of accommodating rascals and submissive weaklings; and of
a mass of men who trot after them without in the least knowing their own minds."

(Goethe.)



"All the wisest of every age are in agreement: It is foolish to wait for the
fools to be cured of their folly! The proper thing is to make fools of the
fools!"

(Goethe.)



"Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing." ("Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.")

(German saying.)



"Fuhrer befiehl - wir folgen." (Order us and we shall follow.)

(Nazi German saying.)



"He that has truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to
own it because of other men's opinions."

(Daniel Defoe "The True-Born Englishman.)



"Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant or an enemy, must
not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves."

(Aesop.)



"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to obtain a little temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

(Benjamin Franklin.)



"Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master."

(Demosthenes (385-322 BC).)



"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

(Thomas Grey.)



"Where ignorance is bliss, bullshit reigns supreme."

(Anonymous?)



"The creative spirit is one and indivisible. It cannot live and work under
servitude or external control. Disinterested thought can not be brought into the
physical sciences and kept out of politics and economic theory. If we are right
in holding that the most urgent business of our age is to devise better laws of
conduct in the arts of human government, within and beyond the limits of
nationality, success depends upon stimulating in as many spots as possible the
largest number and variety of independent thinkers."

(English economist J.A.Hobson (1858-1940) "Free Thought in the Social
Sciences.")



"The first step towards philosophy is incredulity."

(Diderot.)



"Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between
men, a search for their cause, a condemnation of mere opinion... and the
discovery of a standard of judgement."

(Epictetus, 1st Century AD.)



"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."

(Chinese proverb.)



"The no mind not thinks no thoughts about nothing."

(Buddha.)



"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of
life is when men are afraid of the light."

(Plato.)



"We do not know one millionth of one percent about anything."

(Thomas Edison.)



"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."

(Francis Bacon.)



"Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this, to know so much and to have
control over nothing."

(Herodotus (484-432 BC).)



"It is nonsense to say there is not enough time to be fully informed. Time given
to thought is the greatest time saver of all."

(Norman Cousins.)



"I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand."

(Confucious.)



"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather
becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigours of the mind...

(Leonardo da Vinci.)



"Knowledge without common sense is folly, without method is waste. but with
common sense it is wisdom, with method it is power."

(Austin Farrar.)



"Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it... or because it
is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what
your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever,
after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the
benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to, and
take it as your guide."

(Gautama Buddha, 563-483 BC.)



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

(Goethe.)



"Fear the man who feels himself a slave; he'll want to make a slave of you."

(US educationist, writer, John Holt.)



"A slave who has become conscious of his slavery, and who has risen to the
height of fighting for his emancipation, has half ceased to be a slave."

(Lenin.)



"The thought control of dictatorships is imposed by force, but discussion,
criticism and debate can be stifled by fear as well as by force. Persecution of
public opinion can be as powerful as purges and pogroms. Frightened men are, at
best, irresponsible in their actions and, at worst, dangerous. Of all the forms
of tyranny over the mind of man, none is more terrible than fear - to be afraid
of being one's self among one's neighbours."

(US industrialist Paul Hoffman, 1951.)



"We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves
filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their
companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but
our self-esteem, which is threatened...

Few of us take the pains to study the origins of our cherished convictions;
indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe
what we have been accustomed to accept as truth, and the resentment aroused when
doubt is cast on any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse
for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning
consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already have."

(US historian James Harvey Robinson.)



"Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then
man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most."

(US socialist writer George R. Kirkpatrick.)



"A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest."

(Havelock Ellis.)



"There are two ways to slide easily through life: To believe everything or to
doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."

(Alfred Korzibski.)

From "A Radical Book Of Enlightenment For The Common Man."

From Brian Mitchell.

EVOLUTION.



"The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can understand it."
(Einstein.)



"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our
minds." (Bob Marley, Redemption song.)



"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go
into the other room and read a book." (Groucho Marx.)



"And if we were all capable of unity to make our blows stronger and infallible
and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the
struggling people - how great and close would the future be." (Che Guevara.)



"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night the day, that thou
canst not be false to any man." (Shakespeare. Hamlet.)



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