Thinking and Conditioning in Life – Joost A.M. Meerloo

"The shackles of mental control, perceptual filtering and cultural conditioning are harder to throw off today than ever before. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever seen. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our entire consciousness seems to be subtly and relentlessly erased. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely controlled. It is an exhaustive and endless task to constantly explain to people how most things of their everyday wisdom are scientifically planted in the public consciousness via a thousand media clips." Dr. Tim O’Shea

"Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on." Noam Chomsky