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Inspiring Quotations

By December 20, 2020Commentary

Copied from the Lockdown Skeptics site.  I bolded my absolute favorites, which I read multiple times over the years.  Camus, as always, says it best with few words.  Truly, thoughts to live by.

We know they are lying. They know they are lying, They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay

They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions….Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis

The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan

Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius

Necessity is the plea for every restriction of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger

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.
Joseph Goebbels (attributed)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Thomas Paine

Join the discussion 8 Comments

  • Lee Geronime says:

    Have not read Camus. Would you have recommendations where to start?

  • Joseph Lampe says:

    Excellent words of wisdom. I am familiar with many of the quotations. Unfortunately most citizens function in the emotional domain as opposed to the cognitive and do not pursue wisdom. So we end up with numerous ignorant sheep, led by dangerous demagogues.

  • Jim Kiehne says:

    Thanks deeply for this. A light in the darkness.

  • Jennifer Gobel says:

    Dear Kevin: Great quotes! I wish that the school board members I will have the briefest (3 minutes) chance to address on Monday evening would be able to comprehend even one of them. What’s the current average age of death from COVID-19? I’ll be using the old ice berg analogy with these folks, as in >95% of those who are sick with Covid are not sick enough for medical attention. Kids get a mild fever and maybe the sniffles. Influenza makes kids much sicker!!! My quote, “the world is full of idiots!” Jennifer Gobel, MD. Mendakota Pediatrics, West St. Paul

  • Cliff Hadley says:

    Dr. Gobel, you are exceedingly brave to confront the mob, but it has to be done. Leaders in my South Dakota community are forever patting themselves on the back for their ghastly mitigation policies in the schools and the pointless testing regime. I ask simple questions, and they treat me like a misbehaving child. One city commissioner even told me that the local mask mandate was “an effort of compassion to protect your fellow man.” Delusional much?

  • John says:

    So her application of to the climate scam as well

  • Ganderson says:

    Dr. Gobel- you can’t possibly be a doctor, as I’ve been told all doctors are in favor of the panic…

  • Cliff Hadley says:

    Lee Geronime… Camus was once required reading. Now, not so much. His early stuff is best, especially “The Stranger” and “The Plague,” but not easy reading and definitely not uplifting.

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