I wanted to understand the lies that people have to tell themselves when they either quietly or joyfully watch their neighbors ruined, spirited away, killed. Different versions of this horror have happened again and again in history. They’re still happening in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, wherever one group of people permits its leaders to convince them that for their own protection, for the safety of their families and the security of their country, they must get their enemies, those alien others who until now were their neighbors.
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) American writer
Essay (2000-05), “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,” Essence Magazine
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Quotations about:
leaders
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Alas, one cannot assert authority by accepting one’s own fallibility. Simply, people need to be blinded by knowledge — we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because the advantages of being in groups trump the disadvantages of being alone. It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b. 1960) Lebanese-American essayist, statistician, risk analyst, aphorist
The Black Swan, Part 2, ch. 12 “Epistemocracy, a Dream” (2007)
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It’s almost been worth this depression to find out how little our big men know.
Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist
Column (1930-01-11)
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Variant: "It's almost worth the Great Depression to learn how little our big men know.
Collected in Sanity Is Where You Find It, ch. 8 (1955) [ed. Donald Day].
You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags — that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Novel (1889), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Part 3 “The Tale of the Lost Land,” ch. 13 “Freemen!”
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It is the high priests that make demands — not the gods they serve.
Stanislaw Lec (1909–1966) Polish aphorist, poet, satirist
More Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane nowe] (1964) [tr. Gałązka (1969)]
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Will we ever learn to use reason instead of force in the world, and will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, activist; First Lady of the US (1933–45)
Column (1939-10-16), “My Day”
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