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1 " We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. "
― COMPTON GAGE
2 " Circumstances are the rulers of the weak they are but the instruments of the wise. "
3 " After the dinosaurs, it is us the humans that have become the dominant species on planet earth. However, unlike the dinosaurs, we have become the rulers of this planet not by ferociousness, but by intelligence, even though we are no less ferociousness than them. "
4 " Who desired the Great War? No nation benefitted from it. The war brought about the destruction of the Prussian Empire, stripped the British Empire of its ability to hold its colonies, slaughtered the French and starved Germany, inspired a revolution in Russia, and prepared the ground for a more terrible slaughter to come. The great powers didn’t want a war and they certainly didn’t need one. But their people wanted a war. To the surprise of the rulers across the Allies and the Central Powers, the idea of war was seized by the people of every nation. "
― Matthew De Abaitua , If Then
5 " No rules for the rulers is tyranny for the subjects. Freedom for politicians is enslavement for citizens. "
― Stefan Molyneux
6 " Alain gazed at the old road, his expression uncharacteristically somber. " The Emperors believe they have the power to force their illusions on all others. This is part of that. The road itself is declared dead, never to be used, and no one dares dispute the Imperial will." " Not much better that the Great Guilds, is it?" " No I do not think so. When you seek allies among the commons, Mari, I believe you should look to those who do not blindly accept the authority of their leaders." " Too much failure to accept authority and you end up with anarchy, like in Tiae," Mari pointed out." That is so," Alain agreed. " But as you told your elder, there is much that lies between total control and anarchy. The leaders of our Guilds and the rulers of the Empire would have us believe that only those two extremes exist, but I have been among the free cities and you have been in the confederation. Their governing systems are not perfect, but they work while still allowing their people freedom." " Freedom?" Mari turned to Alain, surprised. " I've never heard you use that word. Hardly anybody uses it." " I was taught that freedom is an illusion, only one more illusion which distracts from the path of wisdom." A flare of some deep emotion showed in Alain's eyes. " But I have felt freedom, Mari, as I walked the road beside you, and I know it is no illusion. The will of the Great Guilds, of the Emperor, those things are illusions, and their images will not endure. "
7 " With a [democratic] government anyone in principle can become a member of the ruling class or even the supreme power. The distinction between the rulers and the ruled as well as the class consciousness of the ruled become blurred. The illusion even arises that the distinction no longer exists: that with a public government no one is ruled by anyone, but everyone instead rules himself. Accordingly, public resistance against government power is systematically weakened. While exploitation and expropriation before might have appeared plainly oppressive and evil to the public, they seem much less so, mankind being what it is, once anyone may freely enter the ranks of those who are at the receiving end. Consequently, [exploitation will increase], whether openly in the form of higher taxes or discretely as increased governmental money “creation” (inflation) or legislative regulation. "
― Hans-Hermann Hoppe , Democracy: The God That Failed
8 " Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. "
― George Orwell , 1984
9 " Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy. "
― , The New Totalitarians
10 " More and more I had come to see the Capped as lacking what seemed to me the essence of humanity, the vital spark of defiance against the rulers of the world. "
― John Christopher
11 " Those who rule have always had an interest in shaping the perceptions of those they wish to rule. But never in the history of humanity has their toolbox been so full. Advances in technology and psychology have enabled the messages of the rulers to permeate our consciousness to a degree no prior society could have imagined. "
― James Rozoff
12 " I think maybe the classic formulation was by David Hume in " Of the First Principles of Government," where he pointed out that " Force is always on the side of the governed." Whether it's a military society, a partially free society, or what we - not he - would call a totalitarian state, it's the governed who have the power. And the rulers have to find ways to keep them from using their power. Force has its limits, so they have to use persuasion. They have to somehow find ways to convince people to accept authority. If they aren't able to do that, the whole thing is going to collapse. "
13 " Managing emotions is about living your truth rather than suffering a series of reactions. You are a powerful creator and more than your emotions.Emotions are a good guiding system to let you know what is going on inside; but they are not the rulers of your world. Appreciate your emotional range which is part of the wonderful human experience, but keep your inner guidance system in place. Follow your path. Choose your destination. "
― Sheri Kaye Hoff , Relax Into Inspired Action: Connect the Pieces and Live Fulfilled
14 " The human eye is restricted to see the useen, because there’s a price to be paid to the rulers of this image and if this image is seen by you, you’ll dare not divulge it to others, for others must pay a price "
― Michael Bassey Johnson
15 " THE GAMEIn a field just like bubble we were. I could not count the number of us. And the field was infinite, like a universe and also like emptiness. We all knew each other but we had no names for one another but meaning was all we had, feelings were all we used. It was not strange, not unusual. We had no sense of time or existence but we were very much alive. In this place we had no need of eating, drinking or sleeping. There was no work and no assignments. No one was above another, we were all equals. No language or race, it is amazing how life could be, existence in emptiness. I was part of all and all was part of me. Until time came when few among us were chosen. Chosen by our own choices, to take upon them a challenge in another realm. We all use to call this “THE GAME”. Once they had decided, each one of them would choose a role thereafter. And few time after they had chosen their roles, like electricity they would be taken from among us and go to a place we didn't know. Until a certain time they would return to us not knowing any more where they had been. Hmmm... It was kind of curious to many of us. The idea of conceiving something; taking up a role. A role? What was that? For what purpose? We didn't even know what a role was. It took too much effort to try even imagining what could be a role. There was then an elder among us. Well elder is too much to say. Someone among us who use to give us the rulers of the game and give us definition of the role. What was the game we asked him. He said to us, the game is call life? What is life? We asked; life is the game but it is also the game of death? What is death we asked, well death is the game of life and in between there's a space which is called existence. In this game you will have the chance to choose your role, be a character in the story, make choices, fail and win sometimes. Have a family, learn, grow and then exit through the door of death, and return right here. Is death a door or a game? We asked him, well it is kind of both so is life. He said to us. How many times can we play this game? We enquired from him further, as much as you like, it all depend on how much you enjoy it. It was then at that time that I started thinking about this game, that time when I noticed, I was becoming different from all of us. The time I started making the choice already only through the ideas of conceiving what other possibilities could be out there... To be continued. "
― Marcus L. Lukusa
16 " A nation lives forever through its concepts, honour, and culture. It is for these reasons that the rulers of nations must judge and act not only on the basis of physical and material interests of the nation but on the basis of the nation's historical honour, of the nation's eternal interests. Thus: not bread at all costs, but honour at all costs. "
― Corneliu Zelea Codreanu , For My Legionaries (the Iron Guard)
17 " I have often been asked why I maintained such a non-compromising antagonism to government and in what way I have found myself oppressed by it. In my opinion every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange. It stands ever for the status quo and traditional conduct and belief. It comes into private lives and into most intimate personal relations, enabling the superstitious, puritanical, and distorted ones to impose their ignorant prejudice and moral servitudes upon the sensitive, the imaginative, and the free spirits. Government does this by its divorce laws, its moral censorships, and by a thousand petty persecutions of those who are too honest to wear the moral mask of respectability. In addition, government protects the strong at the expense of the weak, provides courts and laws which the rich may scorn and the poor must obey. It enables the predatory rich to make wars to provide foreign markets for the favored ones, with prosperity for the rulers and wholesale death for the ruled. However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles life. It is the superstition, myth, pretense, evasions, and subservience which support authority and institutional domination. It is the reverence for these institutions instilled in the school, the church and the home in order that man may believe and obey without protest. Such a process of devitalizing and distorting personalities of the individual and of whole communities may have been a part of historical evolution; but it should be strenuously combated by every honest and independent mind in an age which has any pretense to enlightenment. "
― Emma Goldman , Red Emma Speaks
18 " Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means. Most of the old androcratic values and delusional assumptions remain intact. "
― Walter Wink , Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Powers, #3)
19 " There are three kinds of constitution, and an equal number of deviation-forms--perversions, as it were, of them. The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and thirdly that which is based on a property qualification, which it seems appropriate to call timocratic, though most people are wont to call it polity. The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny; for both are forms of one-man rule, but there is the greatest difference between them; the tyrant looks to his own advantage, the king to that of his subjects. For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best that is worst. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king becomes a tyrant. Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute contrary to equity what belongs to the city-all or most of the good things to themselves, and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over into democracy; for these are coterminous, since it is the ideal even of timocracy to be the rule of the majority, and all who have the property qualification count as equal. Democracy is the least bad of the deviations; "
― Aristotle , The Nicomachean Ethics
20 " How did we get here? My own suspicion is that we are looking at the final effects of the militarization of American capitalism itself. In fact, it could well be said that the last thirty years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus for the creation and maintenance of hopelessness, a giant machine designed, first and foremost, to destroy any sense of possible alternative futures. At its root is a veritable obsession on the part of the rulers of the world - in response to the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s - with ensuring that social movements cannot be seen to grow, flourish, or propose alternatives; that those who challenge existing power arrangements can never, under any circumstances, be perceived to win. "
― David Graeber , Debt: The First 5,000 Years
