[Far-Right Sage]

I'm glad to see this has been unexpectedly revived. Some excellent contributions have been added, notably by Ombrageux, Rei, and Rox.

I'll continue with some more of my favorites. I have many.

“The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.” - Oswald Spengler

"Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters." - Genghis Khan

"I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired." - Richard Wagner

"Only he who is free from the terrible hankering after the senses which is so hard to overcome is fit for liberation, and no-one else, not even if he is an expert in the six branches of scripture." - Adi Shankara

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." - Carl Jung

“For me Esoteric Hitlerism is being possessed by the archetypes of the collective unconscious which the Greeks used to call gods.” - Miguel Serrano

“Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.” - Ezra Pound

“Creation and destruction are one, to the eyes who can see beauty.

And the greatest praise to India is this: not only are her people beautiful; not only are her daily life and cult beautiful; but, in the midst of the utilitarian, humanitarian, dogmatic world of the present day, she keeps on proclaiming the outstanding value of Beauty for the sake of Beauty, through her very conception of Godhead, of religion and of life.” - Savitri Devi

“I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race - the natural 'lite of mankind - to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'." - Savitri Devi

"We did not adopt socialism out of books, abstractions, humanism, or pity, but rather out of need [...] for the Arab working class is the mover of history in this period." - Michel Aflaq

"What a man[in reference to Mussolini]! I have lost my heart!... Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism." - Winston Churchill

[IQless1]

I tend to prefer less cerebral quotes, and am especially fond of "zingers", as with this exchange between Lady Astor and Winston Churchill:

"Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink." - Lady Astor

"Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it." - Winston Churchill

What can I say? The classics move me!

[Beirut]

Beware the natural death. And don't die but under the volley of bullets. Ghassan Kanafani

We swear by the lightning that destroys,
By the virtuous and fragrant blood,
By the shining, fluttering banners,
In the steep and majestic mountains,
That we have risen to revolution in life or death,
Our spirits shall ascend to immortality,
And on our shoulders we shall raise the standard.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge. Gibran Khalil Gibran

Reverence for parents stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness. Aeschylus

[Orestes]

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. For we can never know what is enough before we know what is more than enough." - William Blake

[Kman]

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. - Mark Twain

Corruptissima republica plurimae leges - The more corrupted the republic, the more laws it has (Tacitus - Annales (III, 27))

[Doomhammer]

"A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle... Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed."
-George Washington

"In order to stave off covetousness, greed, and spite, citizens world over must be educated."
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men. "
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." - Don Tancredi from Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa's "The Leopard"

"Homo homini Lupus. "
-Thomas Hobbes

"Politicians like to panic... it is their substitute for achievement."
-Sir Humphrey Appleby

"Sovereignty ends where ends the power of weapons."
- Cornelius van Bynkershoek in "De Dominio Maris"

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
- George Bernard Shaw

"I think that all lovers of peace and a civilized life should work to enlighten the world about the impracticability and inhumanity of that famous – or shall I say notorious? – Principle of National Self-Determination, which now has degenerated into that ultimate horror, ethnic terrorism.
We must fight against such horrors."
- Sir Karl Popper

Your guilty consciences may force you to vote Democratic, but secretly you yearn for a cold-hearted Republican who’ll cut taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king! You need me, Springfield!
-Sideshow Bob

The judgment of history depends on who writes it.
-Richard M. Nixon

Die Politik ist keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der Herren Proffessoren sich einbilden, sondern eine Kunst.
- Otto von Bismarck

"Injustice, if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice'"
-Thrasymachus


---

"It's good to be the King."
- Mel Brooks


"... Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just wanna watch the world burn."
- Alfred J. Pennyworth

"...tangerine..."
- Michael Caine

[QatzelOk]

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize” – Voltaire

[mikema63]

     
“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Issac Newton

[The One.]

"in this country, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the pussy" al Pacino in scarface. Sums up my point of view nicely.

AMEN!

[J Oswald]

"It is not possible to understand what is in the minds of other people without understanding their language, and without understanding their language it is impossible to be sure that they understand what is on our minds."

John Foster Dulles

[EastCoastAmerican]

"Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it."

"Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact."

~Both from Lyndon Johnson

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

~Winston Churchill

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."

~Mark Twain

"The new rage is to say that the government is the cause of all our problems, and if only we had no government, we'd have no problems. I can tell you, that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense."

~Bill Clinton

[Kman]

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard - H.L Mencken.

[Drlee]

"God is a commedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh." Voltare

"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans".

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
Fran Lebowitz

Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women, it is simply a good excuse not to play football.
Fran Lebowitz

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.
William F. Buckley, Jr.

Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
Groucho Marx

[rlbentham]

"Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders."
Baltasar Gracian

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/autho ... D3oXM8C.99

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
Samuel Johnson

"Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
Samuel Johnson

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/autho ... EuxuUSi.99

[Drlee]

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
Samuel Johnson

I love this.

[septimine]

“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
― Ayn Rand

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”
― David Foster Wallace, Up, Simba!

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C.S. Lewis

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.

Bene Gesserit proverb

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy."
Addenda to Orders in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class — whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual


Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
The Stolen Journals

[joeylyrics]

.

"Homophobia is the fear of catching aids that is spread so carelessly by the gays that keep constantly quadrupling day by day.
In all actuality... that is NEVER going away.
Spreading deadly diseases should be categorized as acts of TERRORISM and NEVER be sugar coated as if it's no big deal".

[EastCoastAmerican]

"Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family."

~Stephen Colbert

[joeylyrics]

"Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family."

~Stephen Colbert

East...

I'd rather be a lonely orphan than to be raised by two guys who get it on in the bedroom next to mine.
How sick and twisted is that to expose children to those kind of situations and freaks?

[Godstud]

“Judging is preventing us from understanding a new truth. Free yourself from the rules of old judgments and create the space for new understanding.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship