Max > Max's Quotes

“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Candle in the Wind

“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
― Joseph Stalin

“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
― Joseph Stalin

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”
― Noam Chomsky

“I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.”
― Noam Chomsky

“...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.”
― Noam Chomsky

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
― Richard Dawkins

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”
― Victor Stenger

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
― Winston Churchill, The River War

“...But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.”
― Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force

“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....”
― George Bernard Shaw

“War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”
― Anonymous

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read."

[As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.”
― Emma Goldman

“You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House

“I don't believe in your "Good". I believe in human kindness.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”
― Milton Friedman

“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
― Milton Friedman

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”
― Milton Friedman

“Society doesn't have values. People have values.”
― Milton Friedman

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.”
― Ayn Rand