Tag Archive for: humanism

"We've bought into the idea that education is about training and "success," defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death."

Chris Hedges

"Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic-it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor."

John Taylor Gatto

"If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it."

Neil Postman

"The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!"

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions."

John Taylor Gatto

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Henry Louis Mencken

"If the history of the 20th Century proved anything, it proved that however bad things were, human ingenuity could usually find a way to make them worse."

Theodore Dalrymple

"Ideally, every child throughout their entire schooling should be repeatedly told: "You are being indoctrinated. We have yet to develop an education system that is not an indoctrination system. We are sorry, but this is the best we can do. What is taught here is a mixture of common prejudices and the decisions of this particular culture. The slightest glance at history shows how unstable these must be. You are taught by people who were able to fit into a thought pattern set by their predecessors. It is a self-sustaining system. Those among you who are more robust and individual than others are encouraged to leave the classroom and find ways to educate yourselves – to form your own judgments. Those who stay must constantly remember that they are being shaped and patterned to fit the narrow and special needs of this particular society.""

Doris Lessing

"Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as the person who brought an end to Christianity."

Marilyn Manson

"I confess that I cannot imagine how any human being, in his proper senses, can believe that the Sun is stationary when, with his own eyes, he sees it revolving around the heavens, nor how he can believe that the Earth, on which he stands, is whirling with the speed of lightning around the Sun, when he feels not the slightest motion."

David Wardlow Scott

"The true purpose of man, not that which is dictated by changing inclinations, but that which is dictated by eternal and unchanging reason, is the highest and most proportionate development of his powers into a whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition for this development. (...) It is precisely the diversity that arises from the union of many that is the highest good that society offers, and this diversity is certainly always lost to the extent that the state interferes. It is no longer actually the members of a nation who live together in community, but individual subjects who enter into a relationship with the state, i.e., with the spirit that prevails in its government, and indeed into a relationship in which the superior power of the state already inhibits the free play of forces. Uniform causes have uniform effects. The more the state intervenes, the more similar not only everything that acts becomes, but also everything that is acted upon. (...) But anyone who reasons in this way for others is, not without reason, suspected of misunderstanding humanity and wanting to turn people into machines."

Alexander von Humboldt

"We must not forget how serious an infringement on fundamental rights a vaccination mandate would be. It does not only interfere with bodily integrity, but also affects an individual’s dignity if vaccination is carried out against their will. Given the significant uncertainty that still exists, I clearly believe that the individual’s interest in freedom outweighs everything else. In this situation, there must be no coercion to get vaccinated."

Prof. Dr. Dr. Frauke Meta Rostalski

"Let yourself be infected by humanity and then thoroughly infect your surroundings, so that the virus of charity conquers the world before another virus does."

Christa Schyboll

"Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others."

Ayn Rand

"The necessity of teaching mankind not to take drugs and medicines, is a duty incumbent upon all who know their uncertainty and injurious effects; and the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned."

Charles Armbruster, M. D.

"Modern medicine is a negation of health. It is not organized to serve human health, but only to serve itself as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals."

Ivan Illich

"Auch wenn es sicher richtig ist, daß eine radikale eugenische Politik für viele Jahre politisch und psychologisch unmöglich sein wird, wird es für die UNESCO wichtig sein, dafür zu sorgen, daß das eugenische Problem mit der größten Sorgfalt geprüft und die Öffentlichkeit über das fragliche Thema informiert wird, damit vieles, was heute undenkbar erscheint, wenigstens wieder denkbar wird."

Julian Huxley

"We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant."

Oswald Spengler