Operation Ore
quotes
Fundamental debates about freedom and security belong in public and Parliament, and should not be left to the praetorian guard at Number 10.
It's particularly worrying to hear that the London Olympics - supposed to be a celebration of our multicultural democracy - might be manipulated for political ends into part of the Home Secretary's 'make liberty history' campaign.
The document describes liberty as a mere 'expectation', but in Britain it should be a way of life.
The Home Office refused to comment.
"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." - Dresden James
Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. - Thomas Jefferson
He who is born for politics must practise politics. - Adolf Hitler
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. - Adolf Hitler (Ralph Manheim translation)
All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself. - Adolf Hitler
All this was inspired by the principle— which is quite true in itself — that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. - Adolf Hitler
The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous, he cannot believe it exists. - J Edgar Hoover, former FBI director
Justice is incidental to law and order. - J Edgar Hoover, former FBI director
The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any
significance in the major media."
- William Colby, former CIA director
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it. - Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. - Voltaire
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. - Lyndon Johnson
We mean well and do ill, and then justify our ill-doing by our well-meaning. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. - Sir Winston Churchill
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. - William Blackstone
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. - Norm Crosby
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings. - Hellen Keller
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. - Albert Einstein
Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.- Frank Herbert
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.- Charles de Montesquieu
Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open. - Lord Thomas Dewar
The power to question is the basis of all human progress. - Indira Gandhi
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. - Thomas Jefferson
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. - Plato
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best. - Thomas Sowell
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. - Henri Frederic Amiel
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. - Daniel Patrick Moynihan
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. - Thomas Sowell
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race. - Thomas Sowell
Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong. - F A Hayek
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. - Thomas Brackett Reed
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against the government. - Edward Abbey
An injustice to one man, woman or child threatens justice to all people equally. - Dean Tong
The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself. - Robert G Ingersoll
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others. - William Allen White
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. - Henry David Thoreau
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was no a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me. - Martin Niemoeller
The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of any country. A calm, dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused and even of the convicted criminal, ... [and] the treatment of crime and the criminal mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue within it. - Winston Churchill
Life is the great primary and most precious and comprehensive of all human rights . . . whether it be coupled with virtue honour, and happiness, or with sin, disgrace and misery, the continued possession of it is rightfully not a matter of volition; . . . [it is not] to be deliberately or voluntarily destroyed, either by individuals separately, or combined in what is called Government. - Frederick Douglass
There are no secrets except the secrets that keep themselves. - George Bernard Shaw
As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all. - Noam Chomsky
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth. - Abraham Lincoln
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. (Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow). - Horace
The sexual politics of fear is harmful to minors. - Judith Levine
The best argument against a democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. - Winston Churchill
Honesty in politics is the result of strength; hypocrisy is the result of weakness. - V I Lenin
When a nation's government becomes more fearful of its citizens' rights than protective of them, that nation's future is only despotism and extinction. - Unknown
The more corrupt the state, the numerous the laws. - Tacitus
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends for a tiny ripple of hope ... building a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. - Robert F Kennedy
The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another. - Mikhail Gorbachev
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead
The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. - Mahatma Gandhi
We must become the change we want to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt. - Mahatma Gandhi
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V Lindsay
Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them. - John Milton
It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by the majority of people. - Giordano Bruno
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness. - Edvard Teller
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. - Edlai Ewing Stevenson
Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. - Abraham Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. - Elie Wiesel
Liberty lies in the heart of men and women, and, when it dies there, no law, no court can save it. - Stephen Covey
Courage is not the absence of fear, but more the judgement and understanding that it is more important than fear. - Justice Learned Hand
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. - clause 39 Magna Carta
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. - clause 40 Magna Carta
In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. - Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
An election is nothing more than an advance auction of stolen goods. - Ambrose Bierce
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. - Charles Austin Beard, historian
No man has ever ruled other men for their own good. - George D. Herron
Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. - Abraham Lincoln
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas. - Joseph Stalin
If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools. - William Penn
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me. - Abraham Lincoln
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power - Charles A Beard
History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought. - Etienne Gilson
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. - George Santayana
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. - Maya Angelou
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win - Mahatma Gandhi
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. - Mahatma Gandhi
Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. - Benjamin Franklin
What luck for rulers that men do not think - Adolf Hitler
Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. - Rabbinical saying
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children. - Clarence Darrow
A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit. - Rabelais
The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity to which others are trying to prove him wrong. - Harry Segall
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. - Joseph Goebbels
(Propaganda) proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes - The two great routes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflex and the myth - Jacques Ellul
Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way. - Jean Anouilh
A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone. - Jo Godwin
It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion. - Joseph Goebbels
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Hermann Goering
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies. - Adolf Hitler
The weapon of the dictator is not so much propaganda as censorship. - Terence Qualter
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. - Edmund Burke
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. - Albert Einstein
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. - Nathan Hale
Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself. - Harriet Nelson
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. - Abraham Lincoln
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. - Abraham Lincoln
When politicians spin it is disappointing. When police engage in the same activity, it is rather more dangerous - Shami Chakrabarti
Whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. - New Hampshire Constitution Bill of Rights, Article 10
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." --Dante
"Fear and anxiety are weapons in the social armoury for control of primal human aggression. The media are complicit in manipulating this - to the cost of truth and true democracy. For how can 'the public' respond appropriately to such news as this when it is being disinformed of the real strategies that lie behind such events. It is all about resources. Be calm. Measured. Search for the truth. You won't find much of it in the headlines" - Isaac Matiwa
"There is no act of treachery or mean-ness of which a political party is
not capable; for in politics there is no honour."
--Benjamin Disraeli
"Find yourself by losing yourself for others." - Mohandas Gandhi
"Shit! Do we still own the press?" - Queen Elizabeth II
"The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference." - Elie Wiesel
"Justice is truth in action" - Benjamin Disraeli
"I'm not so concerned about my permission for the Tavistock deaths, but if it gets out about my part in the Dunblane paedophile ring and consequent massacre, then my historical reputation is stuffed." - Tony Blair
"If you trust yourself when men doubt you
If you dream-and not make dreams your master
If you think- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you walk with kings- nor lose common touch
Then yours is the Earth and everything in it."
- Rudyard Kipling
A lecture by Sir Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights lawyer who represents people on death row, who lives the words of great men. Full text of one of his legal lectures here.
For each of us, our vocation should be the same. Our job is to stand between power and those who are most hated; to stand between those who hate, and the victim of that hatred. That applies to all works of life, and the death penalty is only an extreme example. And let us not believe that this is a difficult burden. It is a wonderful thing to be able to stand between the people who hate and their victim. Of course, as we get more people to stand with us, we'll gradually work our way out of a job. And then, perhaps, we will have begun to learn about the Politics of Decency. - Sir Clive Stafford Smith
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth…. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not..? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know.. it - now. - Patrick Henry, 1775.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future. - George Orwell
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face - forever. - George Orwell
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. - George Orwell
We will regardless, carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.
If - Rodyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Invictus (unconquered) - William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.
do not stand at my grave and weep - Mary Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. – V's introduction to Evey
I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.
An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.
I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.
Valerie
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