Quote for Today
"Mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in God, but never without belief in a devil."
- Eric Hoffer
Quote of the Day
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
William James
Richard Feynman on Questions and Answers
“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”
― Richard Feynman
Easy Reading According to Sigmund Freud
Our social intuition is strong. Here is one of my favorite quotes on this topic, by Sigmund Freud:
Psychological discernment is not as difficult as one might think: Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear soon become convinced that mortals cannot keep a secret. He whose lips are sealed talks with his fingertips; disclosure oozes out of his every pore.
"Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria" (1901-5), VI, 148
The Ideal Target of Totalitarianism
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism