Bread And Circuses Quotes

“Margaret stood all alone at her first witch-burning. She had on her new blue cap and her sister's shawl, and she stood by herself, waiting. She had long ago given up on finding her sister and brother-in-law in the crowd, and was now content to watch alone. She felt a very pleasant fear and a crying excitement over the burning; she had lived all her life in the country and now, staying with her sister in the city, she was being introduced to the customs of society.”
― Shirley Jackson, Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings

“So put your costume on, honey! Ruby said. Set Harlequin free! That party monster of yours is screaming to come out. Let the monster out!”
― Tom Spanbauer, In the City of Shy Hunters

“Forty percent of the workforce are white-collar workers, most of whom have some of the most tedious and idiotic jobs ever concocted. Entire industries, insurance and banking and real estate for instance, consist of nothing but useless paper-shuffling. It is no accident that the "tertiary sector," the service sector, is growing while the "secondary sector" (industry) stagnates and the "primary sector" (agriculture) nearly disappears. Because work is unnecessary except to those whose power it secures, workers are shifted from relatively useful to relatively useless occupations as a measure to assure public order. Anything is better than nothing. That's why you can't go home just because you finish early. They want your *time*”
― Bob Black, The Abolition of Work

“The one thing Dante never considered is that hell would be a place that the overwhelming majority LOVE. American Idol and X-Factor - these are programmes created by the elite to provide “bread and circuses” to the masses, and how the masses flock to the Colosseum. What they haven’t realised - because they’re too stupid - is that they’re the “Christians” being fed to the lions. They’re watching the annihilation of their hopes of a good life, and yet they’re laughing and cheering! That demonstrates the extent of the elite’s mind control over them. Every second you spend watching junk TV is a wasted second, and if you watch a huge amount of shit, you’ve wasted your life.”
― Adam Weishaupt, The Illuminati Manifesto

“We live in a world that suffers from “status quo bias”. This means that change is resisted just because it’s change. People want to be safe and secure in familiar surroundings, with familiar people and familiar routines. Average people simply don’t like change. They don’t want it. Boredom is supposed to spur people on to change things, to change their life. However, nowadays, we have endless diversion tactics, endless ways of staving off boredom with the TV, movies, music, video games, online gambling and porn, and so on. All this means that it’s harder than ever to bring about real change.”
― Mike Hockney, The Omega Point

“Napoleon had commanded
that once a week there should be held something called a Spontaneous
Demonstration, the object of which was to celebrate the struggles and
triumphs of Animal Farm. (...) The sheep were the greatest devotees of the Spontaneous
Demonstration, and if anyone complained (as a few animals sometimes did,
when no pigs or dogs were near) that they wasted time and meant a lot of
standing about in the cold, the sheep were sure to silence him with a
tremendous bleating of “Four legs good, two legs bad!” But by and large the
animals enjoyed these celebrations. They found it comforting to be reminded
that, after all, they were truly their own masters and that the work they did
was for their own benefit. So that, what with the songs, the processions,
Squealer’s lists of figures, the thunder of the gun, the crowing of the
cockerel, and the fluttering of the flag, they were able to forget that their
bellies were empty, at least part of the time.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Patriotism feeds on hunger.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“The masses must be politicized before they can become of any use. The elite ply them with bread and circuses to keep them docile. The elite hate the idea of a politically engaged population. They want everyone to be watching TV, doing social media, and playing video games. Keep them distracted, keep them dumb, keep them useless.”
― Mark Romel, Mad World: The Seduction of Insanity

“Do not leave the people to think.”
― Catherine the Great

“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”
― Juvenal, The Satires of Juvenal