John D. Rockefeller Quote: Why He Didn’t Want a Nation of Thinkers!

"In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our moulding hand. The present education conventions made from our minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor shall we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. The task which we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shop and on the farm." Frederick Taylor Gates

"Do we even need these demotivated, disillusioned secondary school dropouts for growth? No! Every DAX corporation proves in its quarterly report that the fewer of such poorly qualified people they have, the greater the growth. No, we only need them as consumers. And if we only need them as consumers, then a fair amount of stupidity can only be helpful. Maybe we are breeding them! Just think about it for a moment, then all the contradictions dissolve; although the anger grows even greater, the intellectual confusion subsides! […] And what does that mean in a country where poverty is currently exploding? That they are breeding a solid class of idiots. […] Also, the consumer centers, maybe even in your federal state, are having their funds cut. Not a wrong decision either. Why? Well, the rabble shouldn't think, hesitate, or compare. They should buy the first piece of rubbish offered during the commercial break. […] We need idiots; otherwise no one would eat spoiled meat." Georg Schramm