CATEGORIZED QUOTATIONS, PART 6

THE MASSES, THE BEAST, THE PANTOMIME, ACTIVISM, FANATICISM, JUSTICE

THE MASSES

"We cannot trust . . . people who are nonconformists."

— Ray Kroc, former CEO of McDonald’s

"Man would yield his sovereignty to an immense power; one that does not destroy, or even tyrannize, but one that serves to stupefy a people, reducing them to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious sheep."

— Alexis de Tocqueville, from Democracy in America

"The breathing dead emulate machines. Their work is mechanical. They relate more to the simulated life on television than to their own species."

— Gerry Spence

"Zombies are the liberal nightmare. Here you have the masses, whom you would love to love, appearing at your front door with their faces falling off; and you’re trying to be as humane as you possibly can, but they are, after all, eating the cat. And the fear of mass activity, of mindlessness on a national scale, underlies my fear of zombies."

— Clive Barker

"People in riots tend to act as one organism, the riot becoming some moving, twisting monster that sweeps along those in it in a sea of human emotions. There is a loss of individuality that many find very attractive. The riot itself becomes a cloak, a cover that protects the individual from being identified . . . Riots then become a convenient excuse for some humans to do everything they really wanted to do but never had the nerve to. It’s carnival time where the mask of the riot provides anonymity."

— Eugene Sockut

"The chief preoccupation of a mass movement is to instill in its followers a facility for united action and self-sacrifice, and it achieves this facility by stripping each human entity of its distinctness and autonomy and turning it into an anonymous particle with no will and no judgement of its own. The result is not only a compact and fearless following but also a homogeneous plastic mass that can be kneaded at will."

— Eric Hoffer, from The True Believer (p. 79)

"A few punks get out of hand, and the mob goes right with it. Even sheep can kick you to death when they stampede."

— Andrew Vachss, from Only Child (p. 192)

"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them."

— Albert Einstein

"Humankind cannot bear much reality."

— T.S. Elliot

"It seemed there were a thousand identical twins standing around with cans of Schlitz in their right hands. Each of the Thousanduplets was tall, with a flat, muscular stomach, a dark tan, and of course, blond hair down to his shoulders. Cocked at just the right angle at the front of their blond mops, as you’ve already guessed, were sunglasses . . . They were concentrating on assuming ‘cool’ poses and making sure their sunglasses didn’t fall off."

— Robert J. Ringer, from Looking Out For #1 (pgs 92-93)

"The People, your People, sir, is a Great Beast!"

— Alexander Hamilton

"The mass of the people, ignorant and easily swayed by violent passions, must have a strong arm over them for their own good. Otherwise, they would tear themselves and everything else to pieces."

— John McConaughy, from Who Rules America? (p. 11)

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country."

— Edward Bernays

"(The masses) are ruled almost entirely by the minds and wills of other persons, whom they allow to do their thinking and willing for them. How few original thoughts or original actions are performed by the average person? Are not the majority of persons mere shadows and echoes of others having stronger wills or minds than themselves?"

— The Kybalion

"The majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display."

— Emma Goldman, from Anarchism

"The collective intelligence of any group of people who are thinking as a 'herd' rather than individually is no higher than the intelligence of the stupidest members."

— Mary Day Winn, from Adam's Rib

"Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor.  They condemn everything they don't understand."

— Tallulah Bankhead

"‘Mediocrity’ does not mean an average intelligence; it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters."

— Ayn Rand, from The New Left

"Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do."

— Virginia Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own

"No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion."

— Carrie Chapman Catt (1900)

"A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; as is the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government. . ."

— John Stuart Mill

"Looking at all the brightly dressed college kids walking down the street makes me glad that I chose not to go that route. Hearing the shit they talk about is beyond belief. I can’t understand how people of that age can be into such mindless bullshit. . . . I don’t like college towns. The streets are full of people wearing the same clothes. It’s like being stuck in a wine-cooler commercial and not being able to find the exit door."

— Henry Rollins, from The Portable Henry Rollins (pp. 242-243)

"To prevent them from really thinking out anything themselves, we shall deflect their attention to amusements, games, pastimes, excitements, and people’s palaces. Such interests will distract their minds completely from questions on which we might be obliged to struggle with them. Becoming less and less accustomed to independent thinking, people will express themselves in unison with us because we alone offer new lines of thought — of course through persons whom they do not consider as in any way connected with us."

— Protocols

"There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause. . . . Whenever I’m in the middle of conformity, surrounded by oneness of mind with people oozing concurrence on every side, I get scared."

— P. J. O’Rourke, from Parliament of Whores (p. 194)

". . . the observer would have to remark the docility of the masses — their pliability beneath the thumb of unscrupulous leaders, their credulity that made them believe almost anything poured into their ears."

— Stanton A. Coblentz, from From Arrow to Atom Bomb (p. 417)

"To play on those millions of minds, to watch them slowly respond to an unseen stimulus, to guide their aspirations without their knowledge — all this whether in high capacities or in humble, is a big and endless game of chess, of ever extraordinary excitement."

— Sidney Webb, founder of the Fabian Society, 1890

"Crowds are easily influenced and controlled, and it is well known that crowd violence can be orchestrated by a few key agitators. If an idea is presented to a crowd at the right time and in the right way, the crowd will act on the idea as a group, without thinking. Crowds will often do terrible things that no individual within the crowd would ever do alone."

— Robert Bruce, from Practical Psychic Self-Defense (p. 122)

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

— unknown (oft attributed to Albert Einstein)

"It’s too bad stupidity isn’t painful. Then maybe some of these of these people would go get some help."

— Anton LaVey

"It is important to observe the normality of abnormal behavior, and to realize that it was in a hysterically deranged period of cultural history that the witch persecutions flourished."

— Julian Franklyn, from Death by Enchantment (p. 17)

"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."

— Hitler

"The spectre of a polity controlled by the fads and whims of voters who actually believe that there are significant differences between Bud Lite and Miller Lite, and who think that professional wrestling is for real, is naturally alarming to those of us who don’t."

— Neal Stephenson, from In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line (p. 60)

"The administration says the American people want tax cuts. Well, duh. The American people also want drive through nickel beer night. The American people want to lose weight by eating ice cream. The American people love the Home Shopping Network because it’s commercial free."

— Will Durst

 THE BEAST

"Hate is like acid. It can damage the vessel in which it is stored as well as destroy the object on which it is poured."

— Ann Landers

"Violent criminals are like nothing the average person has ever experienced. They are psychopaths, which means they release their anger and get their kicks from senselessly hurting or killing other people. Many of them don’t care whether they live or die. They may sound and look like anyone else, they are often friendly, but that’s only so they can get what they want — control over others, then the injuries begin."

— Sanford Strong, from Strong on Defense (p. 30)

"The psychopathic violent criminal is not a movie character but a living beast who enjoys senseless acts of brutality — the maiming or killing of innocent people — to release his seething rage. . . . He attacks instantly and decisively, relying on surprise or subterfuge, either armed or bare-handed. He gives no quarter and cares little about being killed himself. This is what you may come up against."

— from Attack Proof , by John Perkins, Al Ridenhour, and Matt Kovsky (p. viii)

"Thieves are usually those who have something and want more. They steal not for food but for flashier clothes, a better watch, a handsome car. They steal for money to spend on flash, on women or drugs."

— Louis L’Amour, from Education of a Wandering Man (p. 11)

"He sounded tough — the way a car with a bad muffler sounded fast."

— remembered line from an Andrew Vachss novel

"Despite a multitude of difference in their backgrounds and crime patterns, criminals are alike in one way: All regard the world as a chessboard over which they have total control, and they perceive people as pawns to be pushed around at will."

— Stanton E. Samenow

"A street criminal lives by a very basic philosophy: there are two types of people in the world, predators and food. The former are to be feared for the pain they can inflict, and the latter are to be victimized and used."

— from Safe in the City, by Marc MacYoung and Chris Pfouts (pp. v-vi)

"Although it is true with criminals in general, you should really consider a street addict as someone from an entirely different planet. . . . We’re talking someone who was conditioned from childhood that the way to get what he wants or needs is to batter and abuse the weak and take it from them. You are not a person to an addict; you are a source for what he needs. . . . he’s got nothing to do except get high and watch for ways to get his drug money. In a real sense, his profession is being an addict and a thief. . . . In their world there are no boundaries except those enforced by violence. . ."

— from Safe in the City, by Marc MacYoung and Chris Pfouts (p. 88, 90)

"Street criminals get a rush knowing they are feared, a response they define as "getting respect." They look at average people as wimpy suckers who are there to frighten, take from, and to hurt."

— Loren Christensen

"When they see an easy target they react almost reflexively, giving little or no thought to the act."

— Loren Christensen

"They wake up every morning to a nothing day and a zero life. The poor uneducated, beaten, and forgotten. Nowhere near enough prisons to handle them. They’re gone from the system, but they won’t crawl under the nice clean streets and disappear."

— unknown

"Killing makes them feel big. Their sense of being alive comes from the fear they inspire, the pain they inflict, their survival while others are dead."

— unknown

"Some have decided not to be apprehended and will even charge against a drawn pistol rather than risk prison. One has no leeway against such predators, and they expect and give no quarter."

— Eugene Sockut

"Like with the psychopathic robot, a junkie high on drugs may become impervious to bullets. At last count, I read that 33 (9mm rounds) failed to stop one of these human sponges."

— Eugene Sockut

"Violent criminals often reflect startlingly peaceful exteriors."

— unknown

"That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should, with joy, pleasance, revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!"

— unknown

"He believes profoundly in the depravity of human nature and knows (from his own experience) that in extreme conditions a man becomes a beast."

— Viktor Suvorov

"He is a walking time bomb that can be detonated at any moment by some tiny slight . . . Because he thinks someone’s staring at him, he’s ready to fight. (If) a motorist cuts him off . . . he speeds in pursuit intending to do the same to him."

— Stanton E. Samenow, from Straight Talk about Criminals (p. 69)

"They joined gangs because they failed at school, had miserable home lives, were excluded from the job market, or knew that they qualified for only the most menial positions. Gangs provided a means of transcending these circumstances, of allowing adolescents to establish themselves as part of a "street elite," and to define a masculine identity in spite of the humiliations of everyday life. In gangs, adolescent males proved themselves, acquired respect and honor, and demonstrated their masculinity by humbling a foe. Violence arose out of the need to meet these intangible goals."

— Eric C. Schneider

"To achieve this state of control, they employ a range of linguistic and behavioral methods, like rhetorical questions, shame tactics, lies. Looking you straight in the eye, challenging, making themselves taller than you, intimidating, testing. Assuming a preaching style, using blanketing statements, asking questions, acting as instructor, treating you as student, giving you no room to respond, defining the power dynamic between you."

— Susan A. Phillips

"The rational faculties are clouded by strong drink, and the animal nature, liberated from bondage, controls the individual."

— Manly P. Hall

"EXPECT NO MERCY"

— a patch worn by many members of the Banditos outlaw motorcycle gang

"When you got a little kid with a gun that has a fuck it attitude, those are the most dangerous ones."

— anonymous, from Wallbangin’ (p. 349)

"Once, that was what I wanted. No conscience. How I envied the sociopaths around me. Without moral and ethical baggage weighing them down, without the boundaries that restrain the rest of the world, they’re the most efficient human beings on earth. You can kill them, but you can’t hurt them."

— Burke, from Pain Management by Andrew Vachss

"Crackheads and speed freaks are violently unstable individuals, and their thought processes are so scrambled that they tend to do things impulsively without considering the consequences of their actions. And not all the things they do are to get drug money either — they just do whatever the hell they feel like doing."

— anonymous (RWT)

"I don’t have much compassion for some of these seemingly able-bodied mid-twenties, vaguely threatening, attitude laden guys who have decided that their personal statement is that they’re going to give up on life at a very early stage of the game."

— Dennis Miller, from The Rants (p. 75)

"Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill! . . . You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go. Why things are what they are."

— William Golding, from Lord of the Flies

"Most violent men are failures."

— A. E. Van Vogt

". . . the basic characteristic of the criminal is not so much calculated wickedness as a kind of childish wilfulness."

— Colin Wilson (paraphrasing Yochelson and Samenow)

"The assistants . . . were tied up (as were several customers) . . . The bandits then forced everyone to drink a caustic cleaning fluid, which burned their mouths and throats. Then they were shot. The girl was raped before being shot. One of the bandits pushed a ballpoint pen into the ear of Mr Walker and kicked it into his head."

— Colin Wilson, from A Criminal History of Mankind (p. 638)

"Fiends — you can tell a fiend a mile away. Somebody who looks like they lost a lot of weight, got on some raggedy clothes, they really don’t care about theyself. They dirty all the time."

— "Maurice," 107 Hoover Crip

"We never killed nobody that I know of. We have put people in a coma, paralyzed them — stuff like that, but we ain’t never killed nobody. Gave them brain damage."

— "N.A.," Compton Gangster BIC

"Chillin’ on the corner on a hot Summer day,

Just me, my posse, and MCA,

Lotta wine, lotta beer, and a lot of cursin’

Twenty-two automatic on my person. . ."

— Beastie Boys, from Licensed to Ill

"They’re not ‘white trash’ — they’re like white toxic waste!"

— Chris Rock

"I think playing with toy guns doesn’t make you a killer. I believe ignoring your kids and giving them Prozac might."

— Ted Nugent

Most people who practice Satanism are Christian fundamentalists in drag."

— Isaac Bonewits

"He’d forgotten just how addictive crime can be. Repeat offenders are motivated more by withdrawal symptoms than necessity."

— Sue Grafton, from "H" Is for Homicide

"Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life."

— Anais Nin

"Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence."

— Pearl Bailey

"The fool shouts loudly, thinking to impress the world."

— Marie de France (12th c.)

"One attacks those who possess things that one does not possess. The attack is all the more savage because the one who attacks is destitute and the one who is attacked is well provided. The one who attacks always considers himself to be in the position of legitimate offence."

— Adrienne Monnier

"Persons who drop things from overpasses and walkways can usually be spotted behaving in a suspicious manner immediately prior to the act. Always be cautious of persons milling about aimlessly over a highway, especially if no protective chainlink fencing (sometimes referred to as an ‘anti-drop barrier’) is evident. These persons tend to favor large rocks and cinderblocks, which can easily crash completely through either the windshield or roof, resulting in serious injury or death."

— from Evasive Driving, by T. J. Steele

"There are people that are so damaged that they are beyond all fear and are damn near unpredictable . . . Most of these people are killing themselves with drugs, but that takes too long . . . They are no longer human beings. I don’t know any other way to describe them. There is something about them that causes an instinctive reaction of ‘Wrong!’ in normal people — not wrong in the sense of moral right and wrong, but wrong against nature and evolution . . ."

— Marc "Animal" MacYoung, from Violence, Blunders, and Fractured Jaws (pp. 106-107)

"What causes opponents to come of their own accord is the prospect of gain. What discourages opponents from coming is the prospect of harm."

— Sun Tzu, from The Art of War

"A man from hell is not afraid of hot ashes."

— Dorothy Gilman, from Incident at Badamya

"In one series of interviews I spoke to four convicts, each of whom implied that he had committed more than a hundred muggings. I did not find these men to be irrational, violent, impulsive, or sadistic, but experienced them (remember, I saw them in a prison setting) as quiet, rational, and not psychotic. They were, however, singularly lacking in insight and frightening in their inability to relate to anyone’s needs but their own. One man said, ‘I am not a sadist. I don’t beat people — only if they are slow in giving me my money.’"

— Dr. Martin Symonds, from "Victims of Violence"

"Some murderers seem to kill for enjoyment, and a few become serial killers, killing again and again, seemingly for the love of it. These people seem to have no conscience at all. . . . Lack of conscience and remorse for wrongdoing are indicators of serious Neg contamination or possession."

— Robert Bruce, from Practical Psychic Self-Defense (p. 160)

". . . the Amoral Thrill Cannibal is largely a prison phenomenon. Since the former republics of the Soviet Union do not carry out the death penalty much, they have tens of thousands of individuals facing incredibly long sentences with no hope of release. . . . By killing and eating the new guy, they figured they could at least vary their diet, come up with a new reason to kill someone, do a cursory study of anatomy, and have something new to talk about. They would also get a trip out of the prison for a court date and perhaps an evaluation period at a mental institution, which was bound to have better food and provide a glimpse of a nurse or two. From their perspective, their planning made sense."

— Shiguro Takada, from Contingency Cannibalism (pp. 97-98)

"One thought consumes me,

The anger of lust denied

Covers me like darkness.

I have become a demon dwelling

In the hell of my dark thoughts,

Stormcloud of my desires."

— Seami Motokiyo, from The Damask Drum (13^th c.)

"Study shows that 8% of women and 2% of men have been stalked at some time."

— CNN news ticker

". . . but I do wonder, dear, if you’ve considered that there are those who are not merely unfortunate or deranged but actually evil."

— Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, from The Godmother (p. 46)

"I don’t like going out in the day. I can’t take the sun. It’s not good for me. I don’t like all the ugly fucking people looking at me like they do. All I can do is dream of killing them. It would feel so good to just be able to shoot them like the pieces of shit that they are."

— Henry Rollins, from The Portable Henry Rollins (pp. 227-228)

"Anger is short madness."

— Horace

 THE PANTOMIME

"Every emotion expresses itself in the muscular system."

— Bruce Lee

"Gurdjieff stated that our movements are quite automatized. We have a fixed number of characteristic movements, gestures, postures, definitions of personal space, and the like, each keyed to certain situations and subpersonalities that bring them out."

— Charles T. Tart, from Waking Up (p. 99)

"The face is the mirror of the mind. The human face is the subtle yet visual autobiography of each person."

— John O’Donohue

"People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning."

— Gavin de Becker

"The face tells us subtleties in feelings that only a poet can put into words."

— Paul Eckman

"It is inappropriate behavior that’s relevant: a stare held too long, a smile that curls too slowly, a narrowing or widening of the eyes, a rapid looking away."

— Gavin de Becker

"One may smile, and smile, and be a villain."

— Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1, 5

"In dealing with men, female offenders frequently resort to flattery and seductive behavior. To gain sympathy with either sex, some female offenders appear to turn tears off and on virtually at will."

— Stanton E. Samenow

"Humility is a good thing, but overhumility is near to crookedness; silence is a virtue, but undue silence bespeaks a deceitful mind."

— unknown

"These guys get out of the joint, they come at you down the street, they look like gorillas. They swing their torsos when they walk; they look menacing . . . He’s got the joint body, the prison strut. You can spot an ex-con in a second that way."

— anonymous, from Connie Fletcher’s What Cops Know (p. 25)

"Ever notice two policemen talking to each other on the street? They never look at each other. One is always looking behind the other. They very seldom look each other in the eye. It’s a survival mechanism. They want to know what’s coming up at them."

— anonymous, from Connie Fletcher’s What Cops Know (p. 18)

"If you see a woman rubberneck, she’s usually a pickpocket or a whore. Whores rubberneck. They know what’s going on. As a rule, whores know more about what’s going on in the street than anybody. The guy whose head is on a swivel, the rubberneck, that’s the guy who’s probably looking to commit a crime. When you see a guy looking all around him, the trick is not to be seen by him, just to kind of lay back and let him look around, follow him to where he’s going."

— anonymous, from Connie Fletcher’s What Cops Know (pp. 24-25)

"Don’t believe anything they say, especially if they say they don’t want to fight . . . especially if they come closer rather than back away. Look out for ones who will touch you or put their arm around you, and never shake hands with them — it’s the oldest trick in the book."

— Geoff Thompson

"Look for erratic eye movement, wide eyes, fidgeting, hand concealment, false smile, or pincer movement of companion(s)."

— Geoff Thompson (on precursors to an attack)

"You could see his bent little mind overextending itself, reading your insults, your fears straight from your brain, picking up on the thoughts you were too chickenshit to say."

— Chris Simunek, from Paradise Burning (p. 72)

"Fake smiles are usually spotted easily, but if the subject is experienced at deception, it can be difficult to catch. A fake smile usually only shows the top teeth; natural smiles show both the upper and lower teeth."

— Edward Lewis, from Hostile Ground (pgs. 14-15)

"As they talked, I was no longer hearing their words. I was watching the foam forming in the corners of their lips and the spray of saliva as their voices grew louder and more insistent."

— Michael Levine, from The Big White Lie (p. 120)

"The study of psychology should be a history of the metamorphoses of men and women into their habitual Masks."

— Sigismundo Celine

"I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week if there is anything to be got by it."

— Charles Dickens

"Become aware of body language. Your own and other people’s. If you’re explaining something important to your staff, try to convey some of your own urgency and enthusiasm; you’ll diminish your effect if you’re sitting rigidly, drawn tight together, with arms and legs crossed. . . . The body language that expresses confidence and authority is the easy, open stance, accompanied by direct eye contact with the other person. . . . If you stand up to address a seated person, you gain height and a certain amount of temporary power. But if you face the person directly, on his level (whether sitting or standing), you are more likely to establish communication."

— Cheryl Reimold

"Adopt a stance with the head erect, neither hanging down, nor looking up, not twisted. Your forehead and the space between your eyes should not be wrinkled. Do not roll your eyes nor allow them to blink, but slightly narrow them. With your features composed, keep the line of your nose straight with a feeling of slightly flaring your nostrils."

— Miyamoto Musashi, from The Book of Five Rings

"Don’t let your face or eyes give away your intention. If you can’t depend on a dead pan poker face remaining that way, smile! Then make your move and carry it all the way through. If force is required, use enough to do the job, use it first and without hesitation."

— William H. Jordan, from No Second Place Winner (p. 108)

"Your face, especially your eyes, mirrors your emotions. If you are tentative or nervous, frightened or apprehensive, the emotion is reflected in your expression and the way you look at someone. . . . When confronted by potential violence on the street, your face should be expressionless and your eyes watchful. . . . Keep your face as still and calm as possible. Don’t try to do anything special with your eyes by making them appear hard, cold, or haughtily staring. They should be opened, not narrowed, reflecting only that you are awake and alert."

— Joe Hyams, from Playboy’s Book of Practical Self-Defense (p. 59)

"A general reading of someone’s face, especially their eyes, will usually give you a clue to what is in their minds. Attackers are usually tense, the muscles around the neck and shoulders are tight, the body rigid. Their movements are usually stiff because they are keyed up emotionally and therefore tense. Most attacks are preceded by a shove or physically aggressive move intended to intimidate you."

— Joe Hyams, from Playboy’s Book of Practical Self-Defense (p. 13)

"The smile, as most any tactic, has its risks. It must not appear foolish or project ridicule; nor should it look like an arrogant smirk."

— Myles Martel

"He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another’s personality, marking vulnerable points."

— Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged

"An amateur in possession of a concealed weapon will often be seen adjusting its position when it shifts uncomfortably, or grazing his hand against it when he feels threatened."

— anonymous (RWT)

"Haggard and Isaacs suggested that these expressions, which they called ‘micromomentary’ expressions or ‘micros,’ are not intended as messages, consciously or unconsciously, but are leakage of true feelings. They may actually serve as a safety valve, permitting a person to express, very briefly, his unacceptable impulses and feelings."

— Flora Davis, from Inside Intuition (pp. 57-58)

"The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual — as we think so will we act."

— Martha Graham

 ACTIVISM

"Civil disobedience on grounds of conscience s an honourable tradition . . . and those who take part in it, may in the end be vindicated by history."

— Lord Justice Hoffman

"To violate the law is often the highest, most sacred duty that can devolve upon the citizen."

— Clarence S. Darrow

"Pie is the great equalizer. How wealthy or powerful are you with pie dripping off your face?"

— Rahula Janowski, on behalf of the Biotic Baking Brigade

"Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you."

— George Bernard Shaw

"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."

— George Orwell

"Strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself."

— Thomas Jefferson

"Never depend on government or institutions to create change. All significant social change in human history was accomplished by individual action."

— Margaret Mead

"Avoid the faint-of-heart, the excessively paranoid, and the not-quite-thoroughly committed. Avoid the casual acquaintance you only see at a protest rally, especially the ones who "talk tough." Such people may well be police spies or agents provocateurs."

— Etta Place, from Ecodefense (pg 237)

"If ever you happen to be sneakin’ around, doin’ sumpthin’ the average citizen might frown upon (like kidnaping Ronald McDonald, or altering an offensive billboard), always be sure to be packin’ some pepperspray! If you happen to be accosted by some nosy bastard intent on makin’ a ‘Citizen’s Arrest,’ a snootful of peppers will make that dumbass change his tune right quick! What happens if two drunken ‘do-gooders’ were to happen upon you if you were unprepared? Do you think idiots like that would be respectful of your Civil Rights? Fuck no — the cops would treat you better! If you don’t have pepperspray, you’d have to use a screwdriver or a can of spray paint, or sumpthin’ — and then the idiots would need to be hospitalized — and you really don’t want that."

— Razor

"Nonviolent actions are almost completely useless when deprived of media exposure."

— Antonio Negri

"Remember, there is a fine line between activism and just being a pain in the ass."

— Dennis Miller

"One has the right to be wrong in a democracy."

— Claude Pepper

"I presume that in general those who meddle with public affairs sometimes perish miserably and that they deserve it . . ."

— from Candide, by Voltaire

"Sitting in a circle singing Kumbaya isn’t going to change anything."

— Ainsley Hargus

"Being fond of courage while detesting poverty will lead men to unruly behavior."

— Confucius

"The stakes . . . are too high for government to be a spectator sport."

— Barbara Jordan

"If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That’s the beginning of social protest."

— Audre Lorde

"The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."

— Audre Lorde

"The word ‘revolution’ is a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the laboring masses to their death, but which does not possess any content."

— Simone Weil, from Oppression and Liberty

"Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live. . . . They won’t become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them."

— Shirley Chisholm, from Unbought and Unbossed

"The rich are never threatened by the poor — they do not notice them."

— Marie de France (12^th c.)

". . . police have issued misinformation claiming unsubstantiated evidence of violent plans by protesters gathering for mass actions. The false information is then used as a pretext for unwarranted police actions. . . . many media outlets appear to have been predisposed to repeat information provided by police without fact-checking or seeking responses from the organizations accused. The damage to free speech and the mass protest movement has been extensive. In addition, activists are scared. Anyone who has been involved in the mass protest movement . . . has friends who have been brutalized at the hands of the system."

— Tim Ream

"The real troublemakers at the demonstrations are always a small minority — usually only about five percent — and they always seem to be able to magically slip away, ninja-like, sometime between when the gas grenades start getting fired into the crowd and when the police start putting everyone they can grab into flex-cuffs and loading them onto hot, crowded, bathroomless buses — where the captured activists will be made to sit until nearly everyone has pissed in their pants at least once. Humiliation is an even better means of aversive conditioning than gassing, beating, and jailing combined. Indeed, many demonstrators subject to this kind of treatment have dropped out of the movement altogether. It is not inconceivable that a handful of compensated federal intelligence ‘assets’ are deliberately perpetuating acts of criminal mischief by which law enforcement can justify ‘collective punishment’ of the entire crowd as a whole."

— Razor

"The greater the resistance, the greater will be the force and scope of the state repression brought to bear upon the people. When resistence is at a high level, the enemy takes measures against the people. But treading lightly will not assuage the rulers. Violent repression is built into the status quo."

— from Prairie Fire, Weather Underground (1974)

"Those who have joined the revolutionary left just to be trendy had better be careful bot to involve themselves in something from which there is no going back."

— Baader-Meinhof Group, from Dans Konzept Stadtguerilla (April, 1971)

"The declaration that our people are hostile to a government made . . . for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult."

— John Adams

". . . my duty is to unify the people, ‘cause to divide people is to destroy people, and destroy yourself, too."

— Peter Tosh

"Rights are never given, only asserted."

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The protests and people who indulge in the protests are completely misguided. . . . These protests are a complete outrage."

— Tony Blair

"Despite such amiable slogans as ‘Make love not war,’ the whole hippie movement was heavily loaded with hostility. It was Freaksville versus Squaresville, the counter-culture versus the establishment."

— Robert S. de Ropp, from Warrior’s Way (p. 287)

"Someone would move into a commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign-flashing flower children and eventually discover that, underneath the facade, the guys who ran it were actually control freaks; and that, as living in a commune, where much lip service was paid to ideals of peace, love, and harmony had deprived them of normal, socially approved outlets for their control-freakdom, it tended to come out in other, invariably more sinister, ways."

— Neal Stephenson, from In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line (pp. 30-31)

"Some of the pipes are big enough to park a car in and some are the size of your finger, but all of them have told their secrets to my gas chromatograph. And often it’s the littlest pipes that cause the most damage. When I see a big huge pipe coming right out of a factory, I’m betting that the pumpers have at least read the EPA regs. But when I find a tiny one, hidden below the waterline, sprouting from a mile-wide industrial carnival, I put gloves on before taking my sample. And sometimes the gloves melt."

— Neal Stephenson, from Zodiac (pp. 30-31)

"The Earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses."

— Utah Phillips

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

— Voltaire

FANATICISM:

"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."

— Winston Churchill

"Every reform movement has its lunatic fringe."

— Theodore Roosevelt

"Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet."

— Eric Hoffer, from The True Believer (p. 81)

"Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet."

— Eric Hoffer, from The True Believer (#62)

"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both."

— Eric Hoffer, from The True Believer (#75)

"You think I want some farmer with a grenade pin for a brain blathering on about how the entire world is run by about five Jews from a luxury cave on Barbados? Well, frankly, yes, I do. The louder they bellyache, the better. Because then and only then — we know exactly where these people are. We can listen to them and, God forbid, actually communicate with them. This way they can’t ferment like bad yeast and ooze out of the brew vat when we’re not looking."

— Dennis Miller, from The Rants (pgs 104-105)

"Manson became a hero of the west-coast ‘underground’ network. But the trial had the effect of convincing the rest of the world that the whole movement of social revolt was a form of mindless emotionalism whose arguments defied logic; it produced, in fact, precisely the kind of revulsion against the left that the McCarthy witch hunts had created against the right. In America, at least, the Manson family had discredited ‘revolution.’"

— Colin Wilson, from A Criminal History of Mankind (p. 630)

"To the fanatic, everything is black or white, curse or blessing, friend or foe — and nothing in between. He is immune to doubt and hesitation. He perceives tolerance as weakness."

— Elie Wiesel

"The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough."

— William Brann, editor of The Iconoclast, who was shortly thereafter shot in the back by an irate Baptist, whom he managed to mortally wound with his own revolver before expiring (1898)

"Bennett’s voice is the voice of an intolerant scold, narrow and shrill and mean-spirited, the voice of a man afraid of liberty and mistrustful of freedom. He believes that it is the government’s duty to impose on people a puritanical code of behavior best exemplified by the discipline in place at an unheated boarding school. He never misses the chance to demand more police, more jails, more judges, more arrests, more punishments, more people serving millennia of ‘serious time.’"

— Lewis Lapham

"Fundamentalists have never had too much respect for law and order."

— Isaac Bonewits

"In order to make sense of the brutal activities of the SS, it must be seen that its members were motivated, for the most part, not by sadism, but by sacrifice in a fanatical utopian cause which suspended normal judgement. . . . The master race was to be the culmination of a biological evolution. If ‘inferior’ races prevented these goals, the master race would be justified, by the ‘natural law’ of Darwinism, in doing whatever it needed to survive the harsh struggle for existence. . . . For the sake of being part of a utopian society which would usher in a golden age, he was willing to give up personal liberty. . . .Though SS men were trained to be the first stage in a superhuman mutation, and already behaved as if they were supermen, they also exhibited a robotlike quality. Fearless and cruel, they were also capable of a cringing subservience to superiors."

— Dusty Sklar, from Gods and Beasts (pp. 94-96)

"Crankish attacks on the freedom to read are common at present. When backed and coordinated by organized groups, they become sinister."

— Ursula K. Le Guin, from Dancing at the Edge of the World

"The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest of purposes."

— George Washington

"Jesus said to be like children, but like 7^th grade children? Cruel, gossiping liars and bullies that roam in packs and cliques, looking for weak and unsuspecting VICTIMS? If you’re having the kind of fun that they cant experience, then you must be sinning — and in their eyes, Slack is the ultimate sin."

— from Revelation X (pg. 49), by The SubGenius Foundation

"People on the whole are very simple-minded in whatever country one finds them. They are so simple as to take literally, more often than not, the things their leaders tell them."

— Pearl Buck, from What America Means to Me

". . . the Pilgrims hardly let everyone ‘worship God in his own way’ once they arrived. They immediately set up a quasi-theocracy and expelled or imprisoned their own believers who spoke against ministers. . . . The Puritans to their north were even worse."

— James W. Loewen, from Lies Across America (p. 385)

"If religion becomes a cause of enmity and hatred, it is evident the abolition of religion is preferable to its promulgation; for a religion is a remedy for human ills. If a remedy should be productive of disease, it is certainly advisable to abandon it."

— ‘Abdu ‘l-Baha (1912)

"You’ve seen an increase in career prosecutors that you didn’t have 15 years ago, people who never practiced in the public sector. They sit in this lofty tower with a rather skewed vision of the world. They are on a divine mission, and everything that gets in their way is evil. The ends justify the means."

— Thomas Dillard

"Numerous religious extremists claim that a race war will soon begin, and have taken steps to become martyrs in their predicted battle between good and evil. Almost uniformly, the belief among right-wing religious extremists is that the federal government is an arm of Satan."

— excerpted from the FBI’s Project Megiddo report

"Some delusional conspiracy nuts seem to think that simply lining up the object of their hatred in the crosshairs of a high powered rifle will magically reverse all the ‘wrongs’ the target in question is alleged to have committed. This is not so. Presidents of countries, CEOs of multi-national corporations, Chairmen of banking institutions, and Directors of large organizations are, almost invariably, nothing more than mere figureheads intended to take the blame for crimes committed by their handlers — an effigy for the rubes to huck tomatoes at, if you will. As Bobcat Goldthwait so eloquently put it, ‘If you get a bad hamburger, you don’t blame Ronald McDonald.’ The true controllers tend to shun the spotlight."

— Razor

"When there is One Right True and Only Way — Ours! — and everybody else is wrong, then those who are wrong are damned, and the damned are evil. We are excused from recognizing their humanness and from treating them according to the ethics with which we treat each other. Generally, the Chosen People set about the task of purifying themselves from any contact with the carriers of evil. When they are in power, they institute inquisitions, witchhunts, pogroms, executions, censorship, and concentration camps."

— Starhawk, from The Spiral Dance (p. 189)

"The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no interests of his own, no affairs, no feelings, no attachments, no belongings, not even a name. Everything in him is absorbed by a single exclusive interest, a single thought, a single passion — the revolution. In the very depths of his being, not only in words but also in deeds, he has broken every tie with the civil order and the entire cultured world, with all its laws, proprieties, social conventions, and its ethical rules. He is an implacable enemy of this world, and if he continues to live in it, that is only to destroy it more effectively."

— Sergey Nechaev, from Catechism of the Revolutionist (1869)

"One man willing to throw away his life is enough to terrorize a thousand."

— Wu Ch’i (400 BC)

"After browsing through various hate group websites, you may notice a common denominator: Hate groups want the freedom to prevent others from exercising the same rights that they enjoy. If you look beyond the surface distinctions (skin color, national citizenship, religious affiliation. etc.) That hate groups use to identify their members, you’ll see that hate groups are often more similar to each other than they are to the people they’re trying to recruit."

— Wallace Wang, from Steal This Computer Book 3 (p. 59)

"Have you noticed that most people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place?"

— George Carlin

 JUSTICE

"Kindness is the beginning and the end of the Law."

— The Talmud

"Justice is . . . the conscience of the whole of humanity."

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both."

— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Fairness is what justice really is."

— Potter Stewart

"The administration of justice is the firmest pillar of government."

— George Washington

"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Man does not give rights. He only takes them away."

— Gerry Spence

"Laws are like spider webs. If some poor weak creature comes up against them — it is caught. But the bigger ones can break through and get away."

— Solon (630-555 BC)

"Under current law, it’s a crime for a private citizen to lie to a government official, but not for the same official to lie to the people."

— Donald M. Frazer

"The game stayed the same: It was always about favors and friends, and who controlled the dough. Party labels were merely a way to keep track of the teams; issues were mostly smoke and vaudeville. Nobody believed in anything except hanging onto power, whatever it took."

— Carl Hiaasen, from Sick Puppy

"The majority of defendants are provided with overworked, underpaid, and thoroughly apathetic public defenders, most of whom aspire for a better paying job in the office of the District Attorney, and jockey for the few available positions in that office by cooperating as much as possible with the prosecutors against whom they’re paired in court."

— Wayne Henderson

"A conscientious law-abiding person might get arrested for inadvertently committing some minor infraction that is on the books but rarely enforced. In such a situation, one could say that an increased level of law enforcement led to identification of a crime (another officer might’ve ignored the offense or given a warning)."

— Stanton E. Samenow, from Straight Talk about Criminals (p. 59)

"Search and seizure, the Miranda decision, all this kind of stuff, police have never cared about any of that. That’s all bullshit. They testify however they want to . . . Who’s there to say he didn’t give the prisoner the Miranda warning? The prisoner? That’s a joke."

— anonymous, from Mark Baker’s Cops (p. 318)

"If you want to stay afterwards and face the authorities, good. I am sure you will enjoy your trial, especially when the opposing attorney points out to the jury how you, a trained killer, did attack and assault that poor mugger."

— John La Tourrette

"Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them."

— Ed Howe

"Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law."

— Goldsmith

"Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced."

— Elbert Hubbard

"You can’t legislate intelligence and common sense into people."

— Will Rogers

"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."

— Louis D. Bradeis

"I proclaim that might is right, justice the interest of the stronger."

— Plato

— Dennis Miller, from The Rants (p. 15)

"You may not believe a law is moral, but it might be wise to obey it out of the rational fear of what might happen to you if you didn’t. Laws themselves don’t keep people in line (except through intimidating slogans such as ‘your duty,’ ‘law-abiding citizen,’ etc.); it’s the threat of violence — the guns behind those laws — that do the job. Therefore, it’s perfectly rational to obey an immoral law if you feel your chances of getting caught are great enough, and the punishment duly severe, to warrant it."

— Robert J. Ringer, from Looking Out For #1 (pgs. 109-110)

"Punishments for capital crimes were almost never carried out. Such crimes and their punishments are on the books primarily as deterrents."

— Isaac Mozeson, Orthodox Judaic linguist

"The CIA in its pursuit of intelligence and influence, often courts the same powerful figures (DEA) pursued as criminals . . . and intelligence wins precedence over law enforcement. The highly connected tuxedo-clad criminal is left in place to provide intelligence to the United States — and drugs to its citizens."

— James Mills, from The Underground Empire

"Law is anything which is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained."

— Aaron Burr

"What’s really astounding about these brickheads who claim to be in touch with the original intent of the founders is (1) none of them seem to have read what the founders wrote, from Thomas Jefferson’s essays to Jamie Madison’s notes, and (2) you know damn well that if they had been alive at the time of the American Revolution, they all would’ve been Tories."

— Molly Ivins

"The prohibition law, written for weaklings and derelicts, has divided the nation, like Gaul, into three parts — wets, drys, and hypocrites."

— Florence Sabin

"Why is the decision by a woman to sleep with a man she has just met in a bar a private one, and the decision to sleep with the same man for $100 subject to criminal penalties?"

— Anna Quindlen

"Petty laws breed great crimes."

— Ouida, from Wisdom, Wit and Pathos (1884)

"That is what is so bizarre about the American legal system. Where else in the world would stealing from a phone booth be considered more serious than polluting the earth?"

— Laura Nader

"The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society."

— Margaret Mead

"The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes."

— Lady Marguerite Blessington (1839)

"Privilege is the greatest enemy of right."

— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"For many persons, law appears to be black magic — an obscure domain that can be fathomed only by the professional initiated into its mysteries."

— Susan C. Ross, from The Rights of Women

"(Law) is one part justice to nine parts expediency. Who needs it."

— Lucille Kallen, from Introducing C. B. Greenfield

"A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much."

— Simone Weil, from The Need for Roots

"What does Mount Rushmore mean to us Indians? It means that these big white faces are telling us, ‘First we gave you Indians a treaty that you could keep these Black Hills forever, as long as the sun would shine, in exchange for all the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. Then we found the gold and took this last piece of land, because we were stronger, and there were more of us than there where of you, and because we had cannons and Gatling guns. . . . And after we did all this we carved up this mountain, the dwelling place of your spirits, and put our four gleaming white faces here. We are the conquerors.’"

— John Lame Deer

"There (have) been . . . literally thousands of instances of injustice where minor co-conspirators in cases, the lowest level participants, have been given the sentences that Congress intended for the highest kingpins. . . . the taxpayers are paying a fortune for excessive punishment. You know there’s nothing conservative about punishing people too much. That’s an excess. And it’s just a waste. . . . There don’t have to be drugs. All there have to be are witnesses who say, ‘I saw the drugs,’ or, ‘He said there were drugs.’ That’s all you need."

— Eric E. Sterling

"Criminals are likely to say and do almost anything to get what they want, especially when they want to get out of trouble with the law. This willingness to do anything includes not only truthfully spilling the beans on friends and relatives, but also lying, committing perjury, manufacturing evidence, soliciting others to corroborate their lies with more lies and double-crossing anyone with whom they come into contact . . ."

— Stephen Trott

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."

— Thomas Jefferson

"Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many citizens, because of their respect for the law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights, due to ignorance."

— U.S. v. Minker 350 U.S. 179, 187

"If a drug-free America is such a good idea, why aren’t members of the House of Representatives taking drug tests? Why isn’t the U.S. Senate pissing into jars on C-Span?"

— P. J. O’Rourke, from Parliament of Whores (p. 119)

"This is the cynical truth about the War on Drugs. Officially-sanctioned factions within the National Security State allow drugs into the country, then domestic law enforcement agencies recruit informants to arrest the people who use them."

— Jim Redden, from Snitch Culture (p. 199)

"Is anybody else indignant that we have a legal system where you can blow your mother’s head off with a shotgun, and then upon advice of your legal council get a neatly trimmed haircut and wear a cable-knit sweater and actually have that matter in a court of law?"

— Dennis Miller, from Comic Relief (p. 142)

"Revenge is a kind of wild justice."

— Francis Bacon, from Revenge

"Our great cornerstone of democracy, the rule of law, has become a source of power and influence, not liberty and justice. I resent the insidious manipulations by those entrusted with such authority, but even more, I despise our deliberate ignorance and passive acceptance of these shackles on the American spirit. We have abdicated our freedom, literally our democracy, to the rule makers. Our institutions now serve these masters."

— Catherine Crier, from The Case Against Lawyers (p. 5)

"Always take a jury trial. Your chances of a not guilty verdict are always greater, and there is always the chance of a hung jury or a reversal of the conviction in a higher court. . . . Your only real chance for an acquittal is to take a jury trial. . . . Court appointed attorneys could care less if you go to prison and are only there to make a show on the transcript to make the court records look all legal and official. . . . The system loves guys who sit in the courtroom nice and quiet while a mock-up trial is held right in their presence. . . . Your repeated objections and complaints about your attorney will open the doors for post-conviction relief. Stand up for yourself. You are probably the only one who will."

—Harold S, Long, from Making Crime Pay (p. 29, 34, 36)

"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence."

— 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v Moylan, 1969