A few apt quotations on the subject:
"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector." -- Plato
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- U.S. President James Madison
When fascism reaches America, it will be wrapped in a flag and holding a cross.
--Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, 1935
Molly Ivins: I came across this quote in a recent obituary for George Gerbner, who headed the Annenberg School for Communication for 25 years: "Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. ... They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities."
Franklin D. Roosevelt: The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.
Thomas Jefferson: I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Abraham Lincoln: The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy and more selfish than a bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at the rear is my greatest foe. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned ... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed.
An 1803 quote attributed to James Madison goes: "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."
Propaganda is to democracies what violence is to dictatorships. The duty of intellectuals is to tell the truth and expose lie. --Noam Chomsky
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act George Orwell (author of the novel '1984')
However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them? - Buddha, The Dhammapada
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