Comrades!...
Hang (hang without fail, so that people will see)
no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers...
Do it in such a way that... for hundreds of versts around, the people will
see, tremble, know, shout:
"They
are strangling and will strangle to death
the bloodsucker
kulaks"... Yours,
Lenin
Party officials, with the aid of regular troops and
secret police
units, waged a merciless war of attrition against peasants who refused to
give up their grain. Even indispensable seed grain was forcibly confiscated
from peasant households.
"Before
they died, people often lost their senses and ceased to be human beings."
It showed the peasants "who is the
master
here."
The
leader
of the
National
Socialist
Workers'
Party
was mass man incarnate, and he therefore was able to call for a
mass
state;
a state in which
individualism
would no longer be possible, because everybody would need to dedicate
themselves to the
goals
of the
community
rather than to their
own
selfish
interests.
Workers
Unite!
People
Power
breaks the
back
of
Communism.
Boris Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago
(for which the
author
was awarded the
Nobel Prize
for
literature
in 1958)
The
peasant
boy's
government-funded education in Paris turned him into a
Maoist
whose first act in power was to launch a
bloody
purge
of
all
educated
Cambodians.
(The
Khmer
Rouge
through the
eyes
of
academia:
rosy, Rosy,
ROSY!)
Since his youth,
Kim Jong Il
admired Adolf Hitler for his ability to
totally
control
his people: "I was
watched in my office and at home, in the kitchen, the bathroom, the garden;
there were bugs and video cameras everywhere."
--Hwang Jang Yop,
North
Korea's
principal
Communist
ideologue
"The
Commanding
Heights"
--Vladimir
Lenin
"I was raised
by an
anarchist
and a
bohemian.
I grew up on brown rice, soy sauce and a steady diet of tax-the-rich and
feed-the-poor. I was dragged to parties where small talk leaned more toward
ending the
era
of
oppression
than the pros and cons of variable interest rates." --Heather Chaplin
(Achieving
prosperity
in spite of the
Left)
Envy
-- the
most
destructive
passion
-- the one that James
Madison thought destroyed republics. It's forbidden seven times in Deuteronomy.
In the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not covet this, thou shalt not covet that."
In other words, it's a perpetual passion of human beings to bring down others
to their
own
level,
to
take
what
others
have... it was reinforced by
socialism,
a kind of
philosophy
of
envy.
Marxist-Leninist
Maoists
For
Capitalism
(!)
The
End
is Near!!
(Really?)
A
New
Ideology:
Environmentalism
(Same
characters,
different
color:
$$$!)
How Immigrants Fare in U.S. Education
(RAND Research Report)
The
Immigrant
Experience:
"If one
[studies
and]
works
assiduously,
and
lies
low
long enough,
even
underdogs
will have
their
day."
--Dr. David Ho
(TIME magazine's
Man of the Year)
Robert Gapasin:
Smart
Filipino
Sound
advice
-- especially if you're
a
teen.
So you did it last night, and now you're worried...
Safe!
(if taken within 3 days),
it's
the nation's
best-kept
secret.
"He
was saying everything I wanted to hear. I mean, to have children and get
married and that we’d make this great team together... I’m a living and
dying example that you can be
infected
in
one
exposure."
--LaGena Lookabill Greene
When nearly 300 Filipino boys and girls from the San Diego area were asked
which person they most admired,
their response surprised counselors...
(Sadly, unlike their
college-educated
immigrant parents, many
[kEwL]
Pinoy Gen-Xers end up with no degree.)
I probably succeeded
because my [educated]
teachers
were more important than my school friends...
Peer
pressure
when you're young can often just lead to very
conventional
[kEwL]
behavior.
I never really paid any attention to peer pressure... I think this
concept of trying to be popular is very dangerous...all these social things. When you finally see it, it's pretty
ugly.
--James
D. Watson, Ph.D.
(Co-discoverer of the
DNA
molecule
and winner [with
Francis Crick]
of the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1962)
Social
"Science"
and the
Humanities:
Sweet
Promises
and
False
Hopes
Go
for the
hard
stuff:
Natural
Science,
Math,
Engineering
--
plus
Economics!
And as an avocation, read the
great
thinkers
none
of whom are
demagogues.
Americans
overwhelmingly
oppose
racial
preferences.
Only
radicals
(in the
ethnic
"studies"
department usually) keep
pushing
it...
(
Something
Asians
don't
need.)
Interview:
University of California Regent
Ward
Connerly
"One aspect of
academic
life which no one is inclined to discuss openly is the
quiet intimidation
of
dissenters...
Very few academics wish to offend both the senior administrators who
govern their careers and budgets, and the well organized
affirmative action pressure groups who are not slow to stereotype faculty
members as
racists..."
--Prof. Martin Trow,
U.C. Berkeley
Glenn C. Loury: "The old civil rights activism sought to
persuade;
the
new
activism
seeks to
extort."
Making kids
memorize
words
instead
of
teaching them the
phonetic
sounds
of the alphabet...
Result:
illiteracy
-- which keeps
them
out
of
college
and
unemployed!
The
teacher
certification
test
(that
bamboozled
applicants
in
California)
"I taught for 20 years at a
state
school and I saw
60 percent
of our students come in
failing
the English equivalency exam."--Shelby Steele
Axiom: it is wrong to discriminate against people based on the color of their skin. Fact:
Affirmative Action does just that
preferring certain people over certain other people
based
on the
color
of their skin.
This is the
tragedy
of
victimization
[as an
ideology]:
"If my benefits come to me primarily as a
black
and not as an American, then the effect over time is to
undermine
common society -- the common culture
and
democracy
of America. I as a black don't identify with America --
America
is my enemy.
(Exactly the
militant
Left's
agenda!)
This kind of thinking causes me not to move into the
American mainstream. Which correspondingly causes me to fall farther
and farther
behind."
The New Racism:
Diversity
and
Multiculturalism
Advocates of diversity [have never] ever quite explained why an
individual's
race
is a valid proxy for his or her
views
on
any
matter
of
intellectual
or
educational
relevance.
The
Fruits
of
Capitalism:
Best(?)-quality
education,
going
cheap
-- The Economist (Dec. 5th-11th 1998) Students are admitted into the
Ivy
League
based
solely
on
merit
-- regardless of ability to pay
-- and with a guarantee of all the aid they need to attend. After a
long bull market, the universities have loads of money to spend.
Harvard
sent a letter to all newly admitted students saying: “We expect that some of
our students will have particularly attractive offers from other institutions
with new [more lucrative financial] aid programmes, those students should
not assume that we will not respond.”
When one begins to tally up
the millions of men and women,
the best and the brightest of their day, who were
killed or forced out of the country, then one begins to realize how
much moral and intellectual capacity we
lost.
-- Lev Razgon
(
Russian
writer and
gulag
survivor)
Dogma?
(Only
for the birds...)
The whole problem with the world is that
fools
and
fanatics
are always so certain of themselves, but
wiser
people
so full of
doubts.
--Bertrand Russell
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense
that goes by the name of patriotism --
how passionately I hate them!
--Albert
Einstein
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary,
"patriotism"
is defined as the last resort of the
scoundrel.
With all due respect for an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to
submit that it is the
first.
--Ambrose Bierce
What
luck
for the
rulers
that men
do
not
think.
--Adolf Hitler
When great changes occur in history,
when
great principles
are involved,
as a rule the
majority
are
wrong.
--Eugene V. Debs
We shall now proceed to
construct
the
socialist
order.
--Vladimir Lenin (Opening words to congress; Oct. 26, 1917)
It is excellent to have a giant's strength;
but it is
tyrannous
to use it like a giant.
--William Shakespeare (Measure for measure)
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe,
but in proportion to their
readiness to doubt.
--H. L. Mencken
To die for an idea is to set a rather
high
price
upon
conjecture.
--Anatole France
If you would be a seeker after
truth,
it is necessary that at
least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible,
all
things.
--Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the
intensity,
never
of the correctness of a
belief.
--Arthur Schnitzler
My political ideal is
democracy.
Let every man be respected as an individual and
no
man
idealized.
--Albert Einstein
Democracy
is the opposite of
totalitarianism,
communism,
fascism,
or
mobocracy...
Toleration
and
liberty
are the foundations of a
great
republic.
--Frank Lloyd Wright
Liberty,
not
communism,
is the most
contagious
force
in the world.
--Justice Earl Warren
An
era
can be said to
end
when its basic
illusions
are
exhausted.
--Arthur Miller
Politics
is a pendulum whose swings between
anarchy
and
tyranny
are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
--Albert Einstein
The
most
costly
of all
follies
is to believe
passionately in the palpably
not
true.
--H. L. Mencken
Democracy
does
not
guarantee equality of
conditions --
it only guarantees
equality
of
opportunity.
--Irving Kristol
It is the
mark
of the
cultured
man
that he is aware of the fact
that
equality
is an
ethical
and not a
biological
principle.
--Ashley Montagu
Equality of opportunity is an equal opportunity
to
prove
unequal
talents.
--Sir Herbert Samuel
In the midst of all the
exactions
of
government,
capital has been silently and gradually accumulated by the
private
frugality
and
good
conduct
of
individuals,
by their universal, continual, and uninterrupted effort to better their own
condition. It is this effort, protected by law and allowed by liberty to
exert itself in the manner that is most advantageous, which has maintained
the progress...towards
opulence.
--Adam Smith
(The Wealth of Nations)
The inherent vice of capitalism is the
unequal
sharing of
blessings;
the inherent virtue of
socialism
is the equal sharing of
misery.
--Sir
Winston
Churchill
The people never give up their
liberties,
but
under
some
delusion.
--Edmund Burke
Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the
population -- the
intelligent
ones
or the
fools?
I think we can agree it's the
fools,
no matter where you go in this world, it's the
fools
that form the
overwhelming
majority.
--Henrik Ibsen
The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects
on the campus is offset by the
general
dopiness
of the people who study these things.
--Richard Feynman
In a democracy
everybody
has a right to be represented,
including the
jerks.
--Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten
I am not
young
enough
to know
everything.
--Oscar Wilde
Strictly speaking, you only know when you know
little.
Doubt
grows
with
knowledge.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Every man has a right to his opinion,
but no man has a right to be
wrong
in
his
facts.
--Bernard M. Baruch
A
little learning
is not a dangerous thing
to one who does not
mistake
it
for a great deal.
--William Allen White
The notion of
primitive
man
possessing some
inner
peace
which
we
civilized
people
have somehow lost, and need to regain, is a
lot of nonsense. Your average New Guinea native lives not only
in
fear
of his enemies, but in terror-struck dread of the
unknown.
--Gordon Linsley
If you see in any given situation
only
what
everybody
else
can
see,
you can be said to be so much a representative of
your
culture
that you are a
victim
of
it.
--S. I. Hayakawa
The important thing is
not
to
stop
questioning.
--Albert
Einstein
The
prejudices
of
ignorance
are more easily removed than the
prejudices
of
interest;
the first are blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.
--George Bancroft (1800-1891)
It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in
argument.
--William G. McAdoo
Prejudgements become prejudices only if they
are not reversible when exposed to
new
knowledge.
--Gordon W. Allport
The power of
accurate
observation
is commonly called cynicism
by those who have not got it.
--George Bernard Shaw
A
foolish consistency
is the hobgoblin of little minds.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
If you
never
change
your mind, why have one?
--Edward De Bono
The things taught in schools and colleges are
not an education, but the means of education.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Few
are those who
see
with their
own
eyes
and
feel
with their
own
hearts.
--Albert Einstein
Some see
private enterprise
as a predatory target to be shot,
others as a
cow to be milked,
but few are those who see it
as a
sturdy horse
pulling the wagon.
--Sir Winston Churchill
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which
differ
from the prejudices of their
social
environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
--Albert Einstein
Nature's
laws
affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws
you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and
hangman.
--Luther Burbank
'Tain't what a man don't know that hurts him;
it's what he knows that
just
ain't so!
--Frank McKinney Hubbard ("Kin Hubbard")
There is much to be said in favor of
modern
journalism.
By giving the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps
us in touch with the
ignorance
of the community.
--Oscar Wilde
College
isn't the place to go for
ideas.
--Helen Keller
The greatest
dangers
to
liberty
lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of
zeal
-- well-meaning but
without
understanding.
--Justice Louis D. Brandeis
A great deal of intelligence can be invested
in ignorance when the need for
illusion
is deep.
--Saul Bellow
The
best
test
of
truth
is the power of the
thought
to get itself accepted in the
competition
of the
market.
--Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr
The whole point of
free
expression
is not to make ideas exempt from criticism
but to
expose
them to it.
--Garry Wills
Marxism:
a
failed
philosophy
whose creed is ignorance
and whose
gospel
is
envy.
--A Student of History
There is
no
good
in
arguing
with
the
inevitable.
--James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
Nature,
to be
commanded,
must be
obeyed.
--Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Among all forms of mistake,
prophecy
is the most gratuitous.
--George Eliot
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years,
has created more massive and more colossal
productive
forces
than have all preceding generations together.
--The
Communist
Manifesto
Money
is the
symbol
of
duty,
it is the
sacrament
of
having
done
for mankind
that
which
mankind
wanted.
--Samuel Butler
It is not the
employer
who pays wages--
he only handles the money.
It is the
product
that
pays
wages.
--Henry Ford
The worst crime against
working people
is a company which fails to operate at a
profit.
--Samuel Gompers
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period
of material prosperity, they have only to behave in a
peaceful
and
helpful
way toward one another, and
science
will
do
for
them
all
they
wish
and
more
than
they
can
dream.
--Sir Winston Churchill
The
growth
of a
large
business
is merely the
survival
of the
fittest.
--John D. Rockefeller
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments;
there are only
consequences.
--Robert B. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, in kings and ministers,
to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain
their expense... They [the
government]
are themselves always, and
without
any exception, the
greatest
spendthrifts
in the society.
Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely
trust private people with theirs. If their own
extravagance
does not ruin the state, that of their
subjects
never will.
--Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations)
The growth of wealth will recruit for the
upper
classes precisely those
from the lower classes who have
the
edge
in
native
ability.
Whatever else this accomplishes, it will also increase the
IQ
gap
between the
upper
and
lower
classes, making the social ladder even steeper for those
left
at the
bottom.
--Richard Herrnstein
Wise
men
learn more from
fools
than
fools
from
wise
men.
--Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.)
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of
opulence
from the lowest
barbarism
but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice:
all
the
rest
being brought about by the
natural
course
of
things.
--Adam Smith
Faith
is one of those words that connotes,
however
irrationally,
some kind of
virtue
in itself.
--Louis J. Halle
Christians hold that their faith does good, but other faiths do harm...
What I wish to maintain is that all faiths do harm.
We may define faith as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence.
When there is evidence, no one speaks of faith.
We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round.
We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute
emotion
for
evidence.
--Bertrand Russell
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one
who speaks, without knowledge, of things without parallel.
--Ambrose Bierce
It ain't those parts of the bible that I can't understand
that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
--Mark Twain
Question with
boldness
even the existence of God; because,
if there be one, he must approve of the homage of reason
than that of blindfolded fear.
--Thomas
Jefferson
(1743-1826)
Religion: A daughter of
Hope
and
Fear,
explaining to
Ignorance
the nature of the
Unknowable.
--Ambrose Bierce
Religion
is
all
bunk.
--Thomas Alva Edison
Science
has done more for the development of western civilization
in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
--John Burroughs
When people learn no
tools
of
judgment
and merely follow their hopes,
the seeds of
political
manipulation
are sown.
--Stephen Jay Gould
Religion
is excellent stuff for keeping
common
people quiet.
--Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
It is conceivable that religion may be morally
useful without being intellectually sustainable.
--John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
A
faith
that cannot survive collision
with the
truth
is not worth many regrets.
--Arthur C. Clarke
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the
point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
--George Bernard Shaw
The inspiration of the Bible depends upon
the
ignorance
of the
gentleman
who reads it.
--Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
SIN: Self-Inflicted Nonsense
--Eric Butterworth
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the
Christian
scheme
of salvation
and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger
with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
--Abraham Lincoln (to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after his son Willie Lincoln
died)
It is surely harmful to souls to make it heresy to believe what is
proved.
--Galileo
Galilei (1564-1642)
By identifying the new learning with
heresy,
you [the
Church]
make orthodoxy synonymous with
ignorance.
--Desiderius Erasmus (1465-1536)
There can be no doubt that the bible...became a
stumbling
block in the path of
progress,
scientific, social and even moral.
It was quoted against Copernicus as it was against
Darwin.
--Preserved Smith
A miracle: an event described
by those to whom it was told
by men who did not see it.
--Elbert Hubbard
One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that
myriads have believed it--they also believed the world was flat.
--Mark Twain
Agnosticism
simply means that a man shall not say he knows or
believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
--Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
And
science,
we should insist, better than any other discipline,
can hold up to its students and followers an ideal of patient devotion
to the search for
objective
truth,
with vision unclouded by personal
or political motive.
--Sir Henry Hallet Dalt
Truth in
science
can be defined as the
working
hypothesis
best suited to open the way to the
next
better
one.
--Konrad Lorenz
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us;
and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.
--Charles
Darwin
(1809-1882)
One unerring mark of the love of truth is not
entertaining any proposition with greater assurance
than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
--John Locke (1632-1704)
Only
fraud
and
falsehood
dread examination. Truth invites it.
--Thomas Cooper (1759-1839)
Whatever is only almost true is quite false,
and among the most dangerous of errors,
because being so near truth,
it is the more likely to lead astray.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round,
for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith
in a shadow than in the church.
--Ferdinand Magellan
Ignorance
is the soil in which belief in
miracles
grows.
--Robert G. Ingersoll
The
dogma
of the infallibility of the bible is no more
self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.
--Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to
a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave.
--Count Leo Tolstoy
In spite of all the yearnings of men,
no one can produce a single fact or reason
to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.
--Clarence Darrow
Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body,
although feeble souls harbor such thoughts
through fear or ridiculous egotism.
--Albert
Einstein
I think the notion that we are all a part of the bosom of Abraham,
or are in God's loving embrace is... Look, it's a tough life...
If you can delude yourself into thinking that there's some warm and fuzzy
meaning to it all, that's enormously comforting...
But I do think it's just a story we tell ourselves.
--Stephen
Jay
Gould
The chief object of
education
is not to learn things but to
unlearn
things.
--G. K. Chesterton
Society attacks early when the individual is helpless.
--B. F. Skinner
One part of knowledge consists in being ignorant
of such things as are
not
worthy
to be known.
--Crates (4th century B.C.)
Superstition is a religion of
feeble
minds.
--Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
I have never met a man so ignorant
that I couldn't
learn
something
from him.
--Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning...
and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.
--Bergen Evans
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles,
but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
--David Hume (1711-1776)
The First Crusade...set off on its two-thousand mile jaunt by massacring
Jews,
plundering and slaughtering all the way from the Rhine to the Jordan.
"In the temple of Solomon," wrote the ecstatic cleric, Raimundus de Agiles,
"one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses' bridles,
by the just and marvelous Judgement of God!"
--Herbert J. Muller
Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove
the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.
--H. L. Mencken
I consider
Christian theology
to be one of the great disasters of the human race...
it would be impossible to imagine anything more un-Christlike than theology.
Christ probably couldn't have understood it.
--Alfred North Whitehead
We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white
is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.
--St. Ignatius of Loyola (Exercitia spiritualia)
The finding of arguments for a conclusion given
in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.
--Bertrand Russell
I believe in
God,
only I spell it
Nature...
Study nature,
love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
--Frank Lloyd Wright
Christian theology is not only
opposed
to the scientific spirit;
it is opposed to every other form of
rational
thinking.
--H. L. Mencken
It can do truth no service to blink the fact...
that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable teaching
has been the work, not only of men who did not know,
but of men who
knew
and
rejected,
the Christian faith.
--John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
For Shakespeare,
in the matter of religion,
the choice lay between
Christianity and nothing.
He chose nothing.
--George Santayana
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have
heard only one side of the case. God has written all the books.
--Samuel Butler
Satan hasn't a single salaried helper;
the Opposition employs a million.
--Mark Twain
People are not afraid of death per se,
but of the incompleteness of their lives.
--Lisl Marburg Goodman
It was previously a question of finding out whether or not
life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear,
to the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no
meaning.
--Albert Camus
As I grow to understand life less and less,
I learn to live it more and more.
--Jules Renard
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
--Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) (1694-1778)
The only
good
is knowledge and the only
evil
is
ignorance.
--Socrates (470?-399 B.C.)
This web page is dedicated to all those who have discussed, debated, and
helped refine my beliefs. Especially to those great thinkers, past and
present, who refused to be cowed by the prevailing social prejudices of
their time. Many thanks too, to Ateneo de Manila University, Philippine
Science High School, the University of the Philippines, the National
Computer Institute, the
Ayn Rand Institute,
the
Skeptics Society,
Caltech, and the
Council for Secular Humanism.
© 1998 by an
Agnostic Pinoy
on the web
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