It occured to me last evening, while reading "Famous Quotes", that if the word government was replaced by the word religion, how many of these quotations would apply to the Watchtower society and it's members.
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. --Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
--Haile Selassie
Truth never plays false roles of any kind, which is why people are so surprised when meeting it. Everyone must decide whether he wants the uncompromising truth or a counterfeit version of truth. Real wisdom consists of recommending the truth to yourself at every opportunity.
--Vernon Howard
Logic is the beginning of wisdom; not the end.
--Spock Star Trek VI Final Frontier
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
--General George S. Patton
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy U.S. Democratic politician and president
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt
--Bergen Evans The Natural History of Nonsense
Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions
--Earl Gray Stevens
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
--Aristotle
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt
--Bertrand Russell
A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
--Arthur C. ClarkeNothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. ~Napoleon Bonaparte
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
-Adolf Hitler
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out...without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
--H. L. Mencken
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear
--Harry S. Truman
"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 to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
General Douglas MacArthur, 1957
Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves. ~Author Unknown
"The great masses of the people at the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously evil ... they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big."
Adolph Hitler
"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
"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 presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." -Noam Chomsky, Linguist, foreign policy critic
"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-edged 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 their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done, And I am Caesar!" - Julius Caesar |
Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945 - - "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. 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 truth is the greatest enemy of the State."Added 8/30/04 via Intellectual Properties
Relationships of all kinds are like sand held in your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You may hold onto some of it, but most will be spilled. A relationship is like that. Held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it is likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively, and the relationship slips away and is lost.
--Kaleel Jamison
The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one. Adolf Hitler
German Nazi dictator, orator, & politician (1889 - 1945)
Everyone likes to say, "Hitler did this", and, "Hitler did that". But the truth is Hitler did very little. He was a world class tyrant, but the evil actually done by the Third Reich, from the death camps to WW2 was all done by German citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was the truth or not, and who because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.
History does seem to repeat itself would't you say?