Surveillance State Quotes – Reflections on Monitoring

"A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols!"

Ludwig von Mises

"In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you."

Albert Jay Nock

"The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments."

Ludwig von Mises

"If we remain fearful, then we will be further stripped of power as we barrel towards this neofeudalistic state where there is a world of masters and serfs, a kind of permanent underclass. That's what's happening; that's what's being created. Rapacious corporate business interests have shattered all kinds of regulations and controls. They have carried out a coup d'etat in slow motion. And it's over; they've won."

Chris Hedges

"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine."

William Blum

"My dear friends, I think you are in very big trouble. Whether you believe it or not, YOU ARE AT WAR. And you may lose this war very soon together with all your affluence and freedoms unless you start defending yourselves."

Juri Besmenow

"“To suppress a rebellion, it is not necessary to act violently. Methods like Hitler's are outdated. It suffices to create such a strong collective conditioning that the very thought of rebellion no longer arises in people's minds.

The ideal would be to shape people from birth and restrict their innate biological abilities. Afterwards, one would continue with conditioning and strictly reduce education to the acquisition of professional skills. An uneducated person has a limited horizon, and the more their thinking is confined to mediocre aspirations, the less capable they are of rebelling.

We must ensure that access to science becomes increasingly difficult and elitist, that a divide forms between people and science, and that information for the general public contains no subversive content. Above all, no philosophy. Here too, we must use the power of persuasion, not open violence.

On television, large-scale entertainment programs are broadcast that appeal exclusively to feelings or instincts. The mind will be occupied with the useless and playful. They can distract their minds from thinking through constant chatter and music.

We will place sexuality at the very top of a person's interest list. There is no better social tranquilizer.

In general, we will do this so that the serious part of existence is eliminated, everything valuable is ridiculed, and frivolity is constantly supported, so that public euphoria becomes the measure of human happiness and a model of freedom.

In this way, conditioning leads to such integration that our only fear is being excluded from the system and thus losing access to the conditions necessary for happiness.

The mass person thus formed must be treated as what he is: like a cow, and one must care for him like a herd. Everything that leads to the apathy of his clear mind is a public good, and everything that could awaken this good must be mocked, suppressed, and fought.

Any doctrine questioning the system must be branded as subversive and terrorist. And those who support it will then be treated as terrorists.”"

Günther Anders

"The State is the Mafia pretending to a Human Rights Organization"

Dave Smith

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

Henry Louis Mencken

"What makes the difference between a gang and a state is the belief that there is a difference between a gang and a state."

Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

"School is a sophisticated means of control by the state, created (or usurped from similar approaches by competing entities—churches, cities, private individuals) to accustom all citizens to obedience from childhood, to instill in them the suggestion of the necessity of the state, to nip any idea of emancipation in the bud, to steer the development of their thinking into well-maintained channels, and to drill them into comfortably governable, humble subjects."

Walter Borgius

"The moment the monster state lays its paws on the field of education and instruction, the goal of the best possible physical and mental development of the child disappears and the bare power interest of the state in the chastisement of obedient, submissive and reverent subjects becomes the decisive authority."

Walter Borgius

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

William Casey

"If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny."

Elon Musk

"The state school system is a military system, modeled on and implemented from Prussian militarism. It is a chain of command from the government to the minister of education to the state secretary to the school inspector to the principal to the teacher to the student. The order: to implement the curriculum prescribed from above. This is a kind of state terror, intellectual terror."

Axel Burkart

"The Government are extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept in mind, however, is that in every case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well pleases!"

Sir Josiah Stamp

"[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a National system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a chargeback for our fiat paper currency.

Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living. They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges.

They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges.

This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor or to this fraud which we will call “Social Insurance.” Without realizing it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur and in this manner; every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and, we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America."

Edward Mandell House

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

Henry Louis Mencken