“It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a Golden Age: but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and that dragon is religion.”
Bertrand Russell
“The process of struggling for public opinion has nothing to do with truth, but with domination.”
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
“I am known for my irony. But the idea of erecting a Statue of Liberty in the harbor of New York hadn’t even occurred to me.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government – a bureaucratic elite.”
William Jenner
“The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment; let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always concealed by another name, and another occupation. None is fitter than the lower degrees of Freemasonry; the public is accustomed to it, expects little from it, and therefore takes little notice of it. Next to this, the form of a learned or literary society is best suited to our purpose, and had Freemasonry not existed, this cover would have been employed; and it may be much more than a cover, it may be a powerful engine in our hands. … A Literary Society is the most proper form for the introduction of our Order into any state where we are yet strangers.”
Adam Weishaupt
“The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.”
Albert Einstein
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”
Carl Sagan
“The art of Illuminism lay in enlisting dupes as well as adepts and by encouraging dreams of honest visionaries or the schemes of fanatics. By flattering the vanity of ambitious egotists, by working on the unbalanced brains or by playing such passions as greed and power to make men of totally divergent aims serve the secret purpose of the sect. People with money were welcomed but kept oblivious of actual secrets. The purpose is to win power and riches, to undermine secular or religious government and to attain the masters of the world.”
Nesta Webster
“The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate.”
George Bernard Shaw