Some quotes worth quoting

(more to come in later posts)

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led like sheep to the slaughter.”
— George Washington

“Power is one of the means by which people climb hierarchies, although the more you can climb a hierarchy by exercising power, the more that's an indication that the hierarchy has become corrupt.”
-- Jordan Peterson

“In the modern world, if communities are unhappy, it is often because they have ignorances, habits, beliefs, and passions, which are dearer to them than happiness or even life. I find many men in our dangerous age who seem to be in love with misery and death, and who grow angry when hopes are suggested to them. They think hope is irrational and that, in sitting down to lazy despair, they are merely facing facts.”
-- Bertrand Russel

“It especially annoys me when racists are accused of “discrimination.” The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members of one “race” to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”
— Christopher Hitchens. Letters to a young contrarian

“Loyalty [to the group] is not blind affirmation of the nostrums coming from the front office. True loyalty is the courage to articulate criticisms which you can anticipate will not be kindly received but which, nevertheless, you think must be heard.”
-- Glenn Loury

“The Democrats don't want a color-blind society - they want a color-coordinated society and they're the ones who'll do the coordinating. It is a complete rejection of MLK's vision of a color-blind society."
-- Larry Elder

"The whole reparations movement is, in my opinion, an attempt to extract money from people who were never slave owners and give it to people who were never slaves"
-- Larry Elder

“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, 'Seek simplicity and distrust it.'”
— Alfred North Whitehead (via Tim Ferris)

“Compassionate policy requires dispassionate analysis.”
-- Walter Williams

"Forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never receive"
-- Shawne Duperon

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
--H.L. Menkin

“the secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
-- Groucho Marx

“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”
― Winston Churchill

"What makes you broken to the masses makes you beautiful for those aligned with The Path. There is an undeniable intelligence to the universe playing out in our lives. Follow the natural pull towards what you truly love to sync up with your purpose. The next step keeps appearing."
-- Jessica Vaugn

"A [programming] language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing"
-- Alan Perlis

"Science that can’t be questioned isn’t science"
-- Nick Norwitz

"The great achievement of the scientific revolution was to be puzzled about what seems obvious."
-- Noam Chomsky (2021)

"Dare to be wise" (in latin)
-- motto of Manchester grammar school

"COVID will be better remembered not for the unprecedented lengths to which governments went to wage war on a respiratory virus, but for the unprecedented lengths to which governments went to wage war on their own people."
— Michael P Senger

"There are some things so stupid, only an intellectual could believe them"
-- George Orwell

'Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.'
— Winston Churchill World Broadcast, 22nd March 1943

"Another of the qualities of science is that it teaches the value of rational thought as well as the importance of freedom of thought; the positive results that come from doubting that the lessons are all true."
-- Feynman

"There was no Covid epidemic worthy of the name. There was a two-year spasm of tyranny, foreshadowing an ominous future, led by the stellar example of the Chinese Comminist Party."
-- Jordan Peterson 3/9/23 on twitter

“Read the books they wish to burn.”
— Bret Weinstein, April 2023

“Your enemy is the people who don’t want you to listen to the people who are supposed to be your enemy”
— Bret Weinstein, April 2023

"The idea that the solution to bad information is censorship should strike everyone as bizarre, insane, and reprehensible. Sure, fraud is illegal. So is incitement to violence. But wrong information? Just correct it! What’s the matter with people? What’s with this will-to-censor?"
-- Michael Shellenberger