“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business…the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.” – Noam Chomsky
“Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt . they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a ‘disciplinary technique,’ and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the ‘disciplinarian culture.’ This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy.” – Noam Chomsky
“All orthodox opinion – that is, today, revolutionary opinion either of the pure or impure variety – is anti-man.”
– Wyndham Lewis
“There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.”
– Roger Bacon (Opus Magus, 1267)
“In a little town, there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.” – Victor Hugo
“But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep – into evil.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Psychometrics is the use of big data about large numbers of people, to score each individual in the Big Five personality traits and Cognition Scale percentile rating for an individual’s thinking capacity. Psychometrics allow precision targeting – and influencing – individuals, at scale, in group datasets of millions.”
– HaystaqDNA
“Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us [by corporations, political parties and oligarchs] with military efficiency… Taken to its extreme, this process creates an enduring digital profile that lets companies know you better than you may know yourself… Rogue actors and even governments have taken advantage of user trust to deepen divisions, incite violence, and even undermine our shared sense of what is true and what is false. This crisis is real. It is not imagined, or exaggerated, or ‘crazy.'”
– Tim Cook, Apple CEO
“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.”
– Carl Jung