Nothing Changes

"Personally I have had occasion often enough already to observe that a democracy is incapable of governing others, .... Because fear and conspiracy play no part in your daily relations with each other, you imagine that the same thing is true of your allies, and you fail to see [human nature, 'self-delusional'] that when you allow them to persuade you to make a mistaken decision and when you give way to your own feelings of compassion you are being guilty of a kind of weakness which is dangerous to you and which will not make them love you any more. What you do not realize is that your empire is a tyranny exercised over subjects [if you deny this then skip directly to 'hopelessness'] who do not like it and who are always plotting against you; you will not make them obey you by injuring your own interests in order to do them a favour; your leadership depends on superior strength and not on any goodwill of theirs [cyclic flaw: outcome is created by very action designed avoid this possibility]. And this is the very worst thing - to pass measures and then not to abide by them. We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered [confidence determination and resolve are higher qualities not present in the base human], that lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals [the Devil's shadow on Earth]. These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser then the laws, who want to get their own way in every general discussion, because they feel that they cannot show off their intelligence in matters of greater importance, and who, as a result , very often bring ruin on their country [Don't Get Stuck on Stupid, Son]. But the other kind - the people [those living as though still in the Garden] who are not so confident in their own intelligence - are prepared to admit that the laws are wiser then they are and lack the ability to pull to pieces a speech made by a good speaker; they are unbiased judges, and not people taking part in some kind of a competition; so things usually go well when they are in control. We statesmen, too, should try to be like them, instead of being carried away by mere cleverness and a desire to show off our intelligence and so giving you, the people, advice which we do not really believe in ourselves."

Cleon 427 B.C. from the Mytilenian Debate

Power

"Power is a poison well known for thousands of years." "But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote." [66 million people and 70 years testify to the death of God.]

"Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig." [Nature]

"There is no way of sidestepping this comparison: both the years and the methods coincide too closely. And the comparison occurred even more naturally to those who had passed through the hands of both the Gestapo and the MGB." .... "The Gestapo accused him of Communist activities among Russian workers in Germany, and the MGB charged him with having ties to the international bourgeoisie." "He was tortured by both, but the Gestapo was nonetheless trying to get at the truth, and when the accusation did not hold up, [he] was released. The MGB wasn't interested in the truth and had no intention of letting anyone out of its grip once he was arrested." [Bluecap test. Will you pass?]

"Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity." "It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a county [future]." [Must the tide return?]

"We have lost the measure of freedom. We have no means of determining where it begins and where it ends." [a young american?]

"A man's family are his enemies." [deception]

"You can pray freely, but just so God alone can hear." [despair or hope?]

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously commiting evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" [The only change that matters is the one we make in ourselves, within our own hearts.]

"Know thyself!" [There is nothing more powerful that we may be taught by Man.]

doublethink

"to know and to not know .... to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies"

"to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out .... knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them"

"to use logic against logic .... to repudiate morality while laying claim to it"

"to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget then draw it back into memory at the moment when it was needed and then promptly forget it again"

"to apply the same process to the process itself, ultimate subtlety"

"consciously induce unconsciousness and then once again to become
unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed"

"to force oneself to be happy of despair and to then be happy of the act of
artificial happiness"

Quotes about Her

"We want to see things now, as they will seem forever - 'in the light of eternity', to know that the little things are little and the big things are big."

"All knowledge begins as philosophy and ends as art. It arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement."

"Analysis belongs to science, and gives us knowledge; philosophy must provide a synthesis of wisdom. Science tells how how to heal and how to kill, it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all knowledge - can tell us when to heal and when to kill."

"Science seems always to advance, while philosophy seems always to lose ground. That is because philosphy accepts the task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science - problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death. She leaves behind fields of knowledge susceptible to exact formulation to her daughters the sciences, and herself passes on, discontent, to the uncertain and unexplored."