Tag Archive for: sophismus

"Aristotle [would] probably conclude most Americans, for all intents and purposes, are slaves."

David Graeber

"Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons."

Michael Jackson

"I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me."

Alan Kay

"Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right."

George Orwell

"The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow."

Ayn Rand

"Falsehood will fly, as it were, on the wings of the wind, and carry its tales to every corner of the earth; whilst truth lags behind; her steps, though sure, are slow and solemn, and she has neither vigour nor activity enough to pursue and overtake her enemy…"

Thomas Francklin

"Our on the one hand ingenious and at the same time completely idiotic central organ."

Werner Koczwara

"A half truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality."

Solon

"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter."

Denis Diderot

"An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook."

Neil Postman

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

Bertrand Russell

"There are, after all, two ways of exercising power, so to speak. One is the old way, the one we all know: oppression.

We saw that under Stalinism and the like.

And then, here in the West, I’ve come to know another form that I hadn’t really thought about before.

That is seduction.

Seduction is something truly insidious. Because at least you can defend yourself against paternalism and tyranny.

Then you remain a subject.

It may crush you; it may kill you. You may have to spend your whole life under terrible conditions.

But you remain a subject. You can say: “I am, here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”

Someone who has been seduced stands there and has no idea where they are.

They protect their seducers.

“Oh, then we can’t take our next vacation on a cruise ship after all. And how are we supposed to manage now that gas keeps getting more expensive?”—that’s how the demands of the seduced person come across.

And someone like that will, of course, always contribute to maintaining the system of seduction.

And that’s why turning people into the seduced is a much surer way of securing power than oppressing them.

The Church, by the way, knew this all along."

Gerald Hüther

"Two left-handed gloves don't make a pair. Two half-truths don't make a truth."

Eduard Douwes Dekker

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Mich irritiert stets, dass sie in Wahrheit gar keine Schulen sind. Wir sehen keine Orte für das Leben und das Lernen, sondern Kasernen. An langen Fluren steht ein Raum neben dem anderen stramm. Alle Klassenzimmer haben dieselbe Form. Die Kinder werden hineingepfercht, alle nach vorne zur Tafel ausgerichtet. Der Lehrer schreibt an, die Kinder schreiben ab. Das ist eine industrielle Anordnung, der die Massenabfüllung als Idee zugrunde liegt."

Peter Hübner

"Mathematics is the perfect way to fool oneself."

Albert Einstein

"The word 'democracy' is a heavy intoxicant. It prevents learning, clouds the mind, confuses thinking, creates delusions - and eventually makes you sleepy and apathetic. Today's democracy junkies would murder Socrates again."

Roland Baader