The Progressives' Handbook

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Too often we enjoy the comfort of our opinions without the discomfort of thought. - John F Kennedy

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain. - Marquis de Sade

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. - Frederick Douglas, 1852

The only real defense against terrorism is to have no enemies - John Fritz

A time comes when silence is betrayal. - Rev. Martin Luther King

We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. - Tad Williams

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it. - Alexis de Tocqueville

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. - David Friedman

Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth. -  Justice Antonin Scalia

The major problem, one of the major problems, for there are several, with governing people is that of who you get to do it. Or, rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well known and much lamented fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. - Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hickers Guide to the Galaxy

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.  - Albert Einstein

The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses - John Kenneth  Galbraith

Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?"...God said, "I did do something. I made you." - Sufi Teaching

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act - George Orwell

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. - Abraham Maslow

Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself. - Gloria Steinem

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it, I'd be ashamed of myself. - Noam  Chomsky

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle  

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities. - Voltaire  

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and truth rewarded me. - Simone de Beauvoir

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. - Aldous Huxley

The most violent element in society is ignorance. - Emma Goldman

God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany. - Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. - George Orwell

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. - Albert Camus

War is fear cloaked in courage - William Westmoreland

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. - Marie Curie

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout. - Alice Walker

Conquerors always call themselves liberators. -  Sami  Abdul-Rahman

One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for Independence. - Charles A.  Beard

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. -  Steve  Biko

When we can't dream any longer we die. - Emma Goldman

A curious, and perhaps unique feature of Western propaganda systems is that those who serve them not only are not subjected to criticism but are in fact lauded for their amazing courage in marching to the beat of the patriotic drums." "[I]t requires "heroism" to denounce atrocities attributed to an official enemy, to the overwhelming applause of articulate opinion. This concept is perhaps novel in the history of modern propaganda. -  Noam  Chomsky

The powerful call us ignorant. - Subcomandante  Marcos

The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. - Karl  Marx

That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. - Simone de Beauvoir

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. - Friedrich  Nietzsche

Silence is argument carried out by other means. - Ernesto "Che"  Guevara

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert Szent  Gyorgi

Truth is whatever survives the cleansing fires of skepticism after they have burned away error and superstition. The healthy growth of civilization depends on skepticism more than it does on faith. -  Oliver Wendell  Holmes

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power.  You just take it. - Roseanne Barr

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less. - Susan B. Anthony

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. - Rene  Descartes

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. - Thomas A.  Edison

All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them. -   Emma Goldman

War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press. - Albert Einstein

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. - Gloria Steinem

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done. - Marie Curie

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. - Helder  Camara

The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. - Alex  Carey

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. - George  Orwell

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. - Martin Luther King Jr . 

While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. - Eugene V. Debs  

To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains. - Mary Pettibone  Poole

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider godfearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. - Aristotle  

An important fact about our intellectual culture is that people can read and write about our long-term policies of defending market democracy from the Communist threat without laughing. That takes no little talent. It is real tribute to the educational institutions and the information system. -  Noam  Chomsky

There is something feeble and contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed. -  Arundhati  Roy

American politics are deeply contradictory of course, but anti-intellectualism . . . is the common strain. This includes a deep suspicion of anything that isn't simple, fundamental, traditional, down-to-earth and "American" in the ideological sense, and can be exploited easily by demagogues and cynical politicians of the right. The key word is "freedom", which includes the freedom to own and use firearms, the freedom to trade and use the marketplace without restraint even if it means serious injury to health and decency, the freedom above all to make America's will rule all over the earth. - Edward  Said

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle. - Aleksandr  Solzhenitsyn

Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas? - Joseph  Stalin

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. - Mark  Twain

"These are times when what used to be called liberal is now called radical; what used to be called radical is now called insane; what used to be called reactionary is now called moderate; and what used to be called insane is now called solid, neo-conservative thinking." - Katrina vanden Heuvel

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything. - Johann Wolfgang  von Goethe

It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be skeptical of someone else's reality. - Howard  Zinn

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion. - Simone de Beauvoir

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. – Napoleon Bonaparte

It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it. - Alice Walker

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow down before children. - Kahlil  Gibran

Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great deal of their time not on the spot, not here and now in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it. - Aldous  Huxley

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. - Martin Luther  King Jr.

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. - George  Orwell

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. -  Mark  Twain

Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter. -  unknown

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. - George Bernard Shaw

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. - Karl Marx

Well behaved women rarely make history. - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Courage is grace under pressure. - Ernest Hemingway

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to. - Alice Walker

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself. - Simone de Beauvoir

Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear. - General Douglas MacArthur

 A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny! - Thomas Jefferson

Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers. - R. Buckminster Fuller

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes. - Thomas Paine

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. - Mark Twain

The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. - Emma Goldman

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes wilful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them. -  Noam  Chomsky

Who controls the past controls the present, who controls the present controls the future. - George  Orwell

It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers. -  Arundhati  Roy

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities. - Voltaire  

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn. - Cesar Estrada Chavez

Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George Orwell

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear - Albert Camus

Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify; i.e., he must be prepared for jail and economic ruin, in short, for the sacrifice of his personal welfare in the interest of the cultural welfare of his country. [If such a program is not adopted then] the intellectuals of this country deserve nothing better than the slavery which is intended for them. - Albert  Einstein, during the McCarthy Era

No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. - Alice Walker

With thanks to Gerry Foley

One of the indispensable foods of the human soul is liberty.  Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense consists in the ability to  choose. - Simone Weil

Whoever controls the language, the images, controls the race. - Allen Ginsberg

All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence. -  Edward Abbey

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

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of pseudo patriotic fervor - with the cries 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 funds demanded.  Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real. - General Douglas McArthur

There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; and the other is to refuse to believe what is true. -  Søren Kierkegaard

Flags are bits of cloth that governments use first to shrink wrap people's minds, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. - Arundhati Roy

A terrorist is someone who has a bomb, but doesn't have an air force. - William Blum

Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore, (individual citizens) have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring. - Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal

When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking. - John Wooden

Obvious and inexorable oppression that cannot be overcome does not give rise to revolt but to submission. - Simone Weil

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself.  That is the essence of Fascism: the ownership of the government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power. -  Franklin  D. Roosevelt

Madness is something rare in individuals, but in groups, people, ages, it is the rule. -    Friedrich Nietszche

The more you can increase the fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants, and aliens, the more you control all the people. - Noam Chomsky

Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for suppression of civil liberties at home.  It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria. - Howard Zinn

Freedom is participation in power. - Cicero

One of the traditional and obvious ways of controlling people in every society is to frighten them.  If people of a democracy of a military dictatorship are frightened they'll cede authority to their superiors, who will protect them...so the fear of drugs, and fear of crime (of terrorism) is very much stimulated by state and business propaganda. - Noam Chomsky

All war is based on deception. - Sun Tzu

When people are free to do as they please, the usually imitate each other. - Eric Hoffer

Power lies in the growth of awareness. - Herbert deSouza  

To summarize: it is a well known and much lamented fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. - Douglas Adams

All wars are wars are among thieves who are to cowardly to fight, and who therefore induce young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them. - Emma Goldman

Whoever controls the language, the images, controls the race. - Allen Ginsberg

Civilizations die by suicide not by murder. - Arnold Toynbee

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system. - Saint Dorothy Day

The freer that women become; the freer will be men, because when you enslave someone - you are enslaved. - Louise Nevelson

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. - Frederich Nietzsche

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. - Eric Hoffer

For more great quotes, check out the homepage for Inciting Democracy: A Practical Proposal for Creating a Good Society by Randy Schutt.