Category: Thought

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1973

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The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven’t seen them since.

Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and Fiction (1978)

The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.

Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs (2010), page 181. Several variants of this passage are being circulated widely on the Internet, usually misattributed to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe, 
Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, 
Is that portentous phrase, I told you so.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS, Don Juan, Canto XIV (1823).

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.

Percy B. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821).

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

SUBJECT: AMC Opinion Concerning “Flying Discs”

TO: Commanding General

Army Air Force

Washington 25, D.C.

ATTENTION: Brig. General George Schulgen

AC/AS-2

1. As requested by AC/AS-2 there is presented below the considered opinion of this command concerning the so-called “Flying Discs.” This opinion is based on interrogation report data furnished by AC/AS-2 and preliminary studies by personnel of T-2 and Aircraft Laboratory, Engineering Division T-3. This opinion was arrived at in a conference between personnel from the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2, Office, Chief of Engineering Division, and the Aircraft, Power Plant and Propeller Laboratories of Engineering Division T-3.

2. It is the opinion that:

a. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.

b. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft.

c. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors.

d. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.

Excerpt from “The Twining Memo,” September 24, 1947

All power corrupts. Take care which powers you allow a democracy to wield.

John McAfee, last public post to Twitter, as quoted in “Larger-than-life software mogul John McAfee dies in Spain by suicide, lawyer says” (Reuters, June 24, 2021).

Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.

Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (1848), ch. 37.

If I had not quit TV news before COVID, it’s highly likely I would have quit during COVID. ’Cause I would have had a really hard time. TV news, and just news in general, (a) went bonkers under Trump and then [b] went like double bonkers under COVID.

Alison Morrow, on her YouTube interview with Bill Dorris, “‘I was wrong about Ivory Hecker,’ says former TV news journalist,” discussing the case of a TV journalist who ran afoul of her TV news station for her covering of HCQ (June 20, 2021).