Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

--Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?

--George W. Bush

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edge sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.

-- attributed to Julius Caesar but unknown

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 it's powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.

--Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels in his diary

When it comes to the news, force-fed to us through the media, corporately-owned, we know the cards are stacked. The corporate view is `objective,' all else is `propaganda.'

-- Studs Terkel

When Ben Bagdikian first published `The Media Monopoly' in 1982, some 50 corporations controlled most of the major media outlets in the United States: 1,787 daily newspapers; 11,000 magazines; 9,000 radio stations; 1,000 television stations; 2,500 book publishers and seven major movie studios. But the time the fourth edition was released in 1993, the number was down to about 20 corporations, and it is still dropping.

-- Molly Ivins, columnist Ft. Worth Star Telegram, from the Introduction to ``Adventures in Medialand'' by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon.

At the head of everything is God, the Lord of Heaven. Everyone knows that Then comes Prince Torlonia, lord of the earth Then come Prince Torlonia's guards. Then come Trince Torlonia's guards' dogs. Then, nothing at all Then, nothing at all Then, nothing at all Then come the peasants. And that's all.

--description of the traditional hierarchy in southern Italy from ``Fontamara,'' by Ignazio Silone

Advertising tries to con you into thinking you're the one that can do what's never been done that can win what's never been won meantime life outside goes on all around you.

--Bob Dylan, ``It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding''

You can cool it you can heat it cause baby I don't need it take your TV tube and eat it and all that phony stuff on sports and all those unconfirmed reports you know I watched that rotten box until my head begin to hurt from checkin out the way those newsmen say they get the dirt before the guys on channel so and so and further they assert that any show they'll interrupt to bring the news when it comes up they say if the place blows up they will be the first to tell cause the guys they got downtown are workin hard and doing swell and if anybody gets the news before it hits the street they say that no one gets it faster their coverage can't be beat and if another woman driver gets machined gunned from her seat they'll send some joker with a brownie and you'll see it all complete...

--Frank Zappa ``Trouble Comin Everyday''

Honesty is hardly ever heard

--Billy Joel ``Honesty''

They keep you doped with religion and sex and TV and you think you're so clever and classless and free but you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

--John Lennon, ``Working Class Hero.''

They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them for their blindness.

--John Milton

In the 1990's, blind faith in your leaders will get you killed.

--Bruce Springsteen, introducing the song ``War.''

That government is best that governs least.

--Thomas Jefferson

As the speed of information increases, the tendency is for politics to move away from representation and delegation of constituents toward immediate involvement of the entire community in the central acts of decision. Slower speeds of information make delegation and representation mandatory... When the electric speed is introduced into such a delegated and representational organization, this obsolescent organization can only be made to function by a series of subterfuges and makeshifts. These strike some observers as base betrayals of the original aims and purposes of the established forms.

--Marshall McLuhan, ``Understanding Media,'' 1964

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

--George Orwell, ``Notes on Nationalism''

You're gonna have to serve somebody

--Bob Dylan

Veblen writes of the leisure class as the shrewd, exploiting group in society that holds the strings and dares to be called superior, that takes no part in production, only in the role of entrepreneur smoking cigars and being superior and smug and forgetful, in short, the enemy.

--Jack Kerouac ``Letters 1940-1956

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

--Wendell Phillips, ``Public Opinion'' (speech, 1852)

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course other may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

--Patrick Henry, speech 1775

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

--Adolf Hitler, ``Mein Kampf''

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

--Book of John, New Testament

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

--Thomas Jefferson ``Epigrams''

God has left this tincture in the blood That all men would be tyrants if they could.

--Daniel Defoe, ``The Kenfish Petition''

The very first essential for success is perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.

--Adolf Hitler, ``Mein Kampf''

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

--Ernest Hemingway, ``Notes on the Next War''

The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.

--John Steinbeck, ``The Grapes of Wrath”

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

--Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln-Douglas debate

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

--Thomas Paine, ``Common Sense''

National Socialism does not harbor the slightest aggressive intent toward any European nation.

--Adolf Hitler, to Nazi Congress, 1935

...the ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than the temporary failures of democracy.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address, 1937

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

--Abraham Lincoln, from A.K. McClure's ``Lincoln's Yarns and Stories"

O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!

--Walter Scott, ``Marmion''

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side

--J. R. Lowell, ``The present Crisis''

These are the times that try men's souls.

--Thomas Paine, ``The American Crisis''

And who are the greater criminals -- those who sell the instruments of death, or those who buy them and use them?

--Robert Sherwood, ``Idiot's Delight''

Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land and the workmen's tools, but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive.

--J.B.S. Haldane, ``I believe''

We demand that big business give people a square deal.

--Theodore Roosevelt, letter

It will never be possible for any length of time for any group of the American people, either by reason of wealth or learning or inheritance or economic power, to retain any mandate, any permanent authority to arrogate to itself the political control of American public life.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address, June, 1936

We will grind your revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine have the power.

--Everhard, leader of the Oligarchs, ``The Iron Heel'' by Jack London

Publicity and openness, honest and complete -- that is the prime condition for the health of every society, and ours, too. The man who does not want them in our country is indifferent to his fatherland and thinks only about his own gain.

--Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, in a letter to the writers' union of the Russian Republic, 1969

Freedom of the press from governmental interference under the First Amendment does not sanction suppression of that freedom by private interests.

--Supreme Court decision, 1945

It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which the truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it by the Government itself or a private licensee.

--Supreme Court decision, 1969

The business of America is business.

--Calvin Coolidge

Big business is government.

--Morton Mintz and Jerry Cohen, ``America, Inc.''

The vice president [Agnew] is incredible. I feel I should write him a letter. He's amazing, what he has done to the media, helping it to reform itself. I'm a close watcher of newspapers and TV. I think they've taken a second look. You can't underestimate the power of fear. They're afraid if they don't shape up...

--Tricia Nixon, Newsweek, March 2, 1970

I read the news today, oh boy.

--John Lennon-Paul McCartney, ``A Day in the Life''

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.

--Hunter S. Thompson, ``He was a crook,'' Rolling Stone, June 16, '94

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

--Harry Emerson Fosdick

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

--Winston Churchill

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.

--Harry S. Truman

As I would not be a slave, neither would I be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

--Abraham Lincoln

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right -- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.

--Abraham Lincoln

Sunday papers (don't ask no questions) Sunday papers (don't get no lies) Sunday papers (don't raise no objections) Sunday papers (ain't got no eyes)

--Joe Jackson, ``Sunday Papers''

We hold the power and bear the responsibility.

--Abraham Lincoln

It is not possible to found a lasting power on injustice.

--Demosthenes

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

--Leo Tolstoy

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force.

--George Washington

Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you're always afraid Step out of line, the man comes and takes you away

--Stephen Stills

The legitimate object of a government is to do for a community of people what ever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.

--Abraham Lincoln

How can you govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese?

--Charles DeGaulle

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

--Henry Kissinger

History: an account mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

--Ambrose Bierce

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Liberty means responsibility. That's why most men dread it.

--George Bernard Shaw

Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see

--John Lennon-Paul McCartney ``Strawberry Fields Forever''

When you have robbed a man of everything he is no longer in your power. He is free again.

--Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn

America is run largely by and for about 5,000 people who are actively supported by 50,000 beavers eager to take their places. I arrive at this figure this way: maybe 2,500 megacorporation executives, 500 politicians, lobbyists and Congressional committee chairmen, 500 investment bankers, 500 partners in major accounting firms, 500 labor brokers. If you don't like my figures, make up your own...

--Robert Townsend, former head of Avis

Burke said there are three Estates in Parliament; but in the reporters' gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important than them all.

--Thomas Carlyle

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

--A.J. Liebling

If you ever injected the truth into politics, you would have no politics.

--Will Rogers

Politics, and the fate of man, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness.

--Albert Camus

Confusion, indecision, fear; these are my weapons.

--Adolf Hitler

When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.

--Richard Nixon

Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labors and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.

--Thomas Jefferson

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

--Oscar Wilde

Sure we'll have fascism here but it will come as an anti-fascist movement.

--Huey Long

War is the trade of kings.

--John Dryden

Hitler, the idol of this mass , and himself only a petty bourgeois -- a petty bourgeois posing as a Napoleon -- in reality followed the dictates of a higher power.

--Ernst Henri

A good catchword can obscure analysis for 50 years.

--Johan Huisinga

The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.

--John C. Calhoun

What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

--Thomas Jefferson

Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes a disease.

--Fyodor Dostoevsky

When a tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

--Plato

Who wants yesterday's papers?

--Mick Jagger-Keith Richards, ``Yesterday's Papers''

Oligarchy: a government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.

--Plato

The condition upon which God that given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

--John Philpot Curran

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

--Aristotle

"Ownership" of physical entities by man is untenable in natural law and inherently obstructive to evolution and realization of the comprehensive emancipation of man.... Only one's own personality and life are ownable.

--Buckminster Fuller

There is no program, no policy, no ideology and certainly no philosophy back of Fascism, as there is back of almost every other form of government. It is nothing but a spoils system.

--George Seldes, ``Facts and Fascism,'' 1943

The viewer of Renaissance art is systematically placed outside of the frame of experience... The instantaneous world of electric informational media involves all of us, all at once. No detachment or frame is possible.

--Marshall McLuhan, ``The Medium is the Massage,'' 1967

Every Roman was surrounded by slaves. The slave and his psychology flooded ancient Italy, and every Roman became inwardly, and of course unwittingly, a slave. Because living constantly in the atmosphere of slaves, he became infected through the unconscious with their psychology.

--C.G. Jung, ``Contributions to Analytical Psychology'' 1928

The story of El Salvador the silence of Hiroshima destruction of Cambodia short memory short memory must have a short memory

--Peter Garrett, Midnight Oil, ``Short Memory''

There's a battle outside raging It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls for the times they are a-changing

--Bob Dylan, ``The Times They Are A-Changing''

The rich get richer the poor get the picture

--Peter Garrett, Midnight Oil, ``Read about it''

I find that approximately no one knows what is going on. That's why we have been leaving it to the politicians to make the world work.

--Buckminster Fuller