Revealing Quotes from the Powerful

[luke]

Revealing Quotes from the Powerful

If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.
– Madeleine K. Albright, 64th Secretary of State of the United States and Ambassador to the United Nations

What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?
– Madeleine K. Albright

I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.
– Madeleine K. Albright [In response to a question from Leslie Stahl, “We have heard that a half million children have died (as a result of Clinton's sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. ... is the price worth it?

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in Democratic society.
– Edward Bernays (1891-1995) "Father" of modern public relations (PR) and director of the U.S. Committee on Public Information during World War I, on government propaganda

Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. Our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
– Edward Bernays, Propaganda - 1928

History is a set of lies agreed upon.
– Napoleon Bonaparte (1768-1821)

In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities effectively exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.
— Zbignew Brzezinski, current advisor to Barrack Obama

It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization. — Zbignew Brzezinski—from The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski 1997

There's three things to remember: claim everything, explain nothing, deny everything.
– Senator Prescott Bush (Skull and Bones, 1917) The Bush family patriarch made the above statement in a 1966 interview for Columbia University's oral history project on the Eisenhower administration. Prescott Bush said that political dictum had been explained to him by Claire Boothe Luce, congresswoman, ambassador and wife of Time-Life media magnate Henry Luce (Skull and Bones 1920)

This American system of ours. call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.
– Al Capone

We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.
-- William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using gases against uncivilised tribes.
--Winston S Churchill, Great Britain’s then Colonial Secretary, referring to the Kurds, in an official communication, 1921

I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia by the fact that a stronger race has come in and taken their place.
--Winston S Churchill

The story of the human race is war.
--Winston S Churchill

If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.
– Bill Clinton

The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people.
– Bill Clinton

We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.
– Bill Clinton, U.S.A. Today, 11 March 1993

As America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.
-- Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of an external menace. This involves the development to a high degree of the nation-hero, nation-villain ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of sacrifice. Once these exist, we have gone a long way on the path to war.
- John Foster Dulles

The Japanese were ready to surender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing [atomic bomb]. . . . I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) 34th President of the United States and Supreme Allied Commander

For globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is....The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist...McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
– Thomas Friedman, from "What the World Needs Now" in the New York Times and Illustrated by an American Flag on a fist.

It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
-- Henry Ford

This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.
– Benjamin Franklin

Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible.
– Milton Friedman

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.
--Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.
--Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.
--Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

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.
--Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

"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 becomes the greatest enemy of the State." -- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbel
--Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
--Adolf Hitler

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
--Adolf Hitler

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
– Adolf Hitler

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others
– Adolf Hitler

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the 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 a big one.
--Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.
– J. Edgar Hoover

To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War Il, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private sector’s ‘Establishment’.
– Samuel P. Huntington, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

Those who own the country ought to govern it.
– John Jay, first chief justice of the United States, 1787

We have about half the world's wealth ...but only 5 percent of its population.... In this situation ... our real job in the coming years is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity... To do so we have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming, ... concentrate everywhere on our immediate national objectives...[and] deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
George Kenan [Department of State Policy Planning Study No. 23, 1948].

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
– Henry Kissinger, 56th U.S. Secretary of State and 1973 Nobel Prize-Winner for Peace

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
– Henry Kissinger

Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
– Henry Kissinger

Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.
– Henry Kissinger

covert action should not be confused with missionary work
– Henry Kissinger, about the CIA's betrayal of Iraqi Kurds,

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
– General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) WWII Supreme Allied Commander of the Southwest Pacific, Supreme United Nations Commander

Capital must protect itself in every way... Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
– J.P. Morgan

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
– Theodore Roosevelt

American private enterprise is confronted with this choice; it may strike out and save its position all over the world, or sit by and witness its own funeral.... We must set the pace and assume the responsibility of the majority stockholder in this corporation known as the world.... This is a permanent obligation.... Our foreign policy will be more concerned with the safety and stability of our foreign investments than ever before.
– Standard Oil of New Jersey executive, 1946

The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.
-- J. Edgar Hoover

Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? - stupid.
– Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, 1965

We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.
– David Rockefeller (Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank)

Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.
– David Rockefeller

We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected the promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world-government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the National autodetermination practiced in past centuries.
-- David Rockefeller in an address to a Trilateral Commission meeting in June of 1991

No triumph of peace can equal the armed triumph of war. . . . In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.
– Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 26th U.S. President, U.S. Vice President, 1906 Nobel Prize-Winner for Peace

Of course, our whole national history has been one of expansion. . . . That the barbarians recede or are conquered, with the attendant fact that peace follows their retrogression or conquest, is due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.
– Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 26th U.S. President, U.S. Vice President, 1906 Nobel Prize-Winner for Peace

The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependant on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class.
-- Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863

Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws.
-- Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson, and I am not wholly excepting the administration of W.W. (Woodrow Wilson.) The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States—only on a far bigger and broader basis.
– Franklin D Roosevelt

Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that... I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister, October 3, 2001

You kill one person it’s a tragedy, you kill ten thousand people it a statistic
– Joseph Stalin [Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili] (1879-1953)

…who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.
– Joseph Stalin

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in ’47, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.
– Harry S Truman (1884-1972) 33rd President of the United States, U.S. Vice President, U.S. Senator

If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible.
– Harry S Truman

Our strategy [after the fall of the Soviet Union] must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor.
– U.S. Defense Planning Guidance, 1992

Oh Mortal Man, is there nothing you cannot be made to believe?
-- Adam Weishaupt

We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.
-- Woodrow Wilson

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
- Woodrow Wilson

[faceless]

some powerful stuff there - that Madeleine Albright is full of charm and pleasantry eh?

[TheCaptain]

What a total and utter complete bunch of tossers.

But we knew that, didn't we?

And yet we still end up voting for them.

(Well, I don't, I might though, if I could get up that early.)