Category: Verbatim

Bolshevism is knocking at our gates, we can’t afford to let it in …. We must keep America whole and safe and unspoiled. We must keep the worker away from red literature and red ruses; we must see that his mind remains healthy.

— Al Capone (1899-1947), American gangster, contribution to “Liberty” magazine

What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there, but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny.

— Alexis de Tocqueville, (1805-1859), French statesman

Must conservatism always be in the hands of cavemen or brutal enemies of the spirit?

— Thomas Mann (1875-1950), German novelist

No case whatever can be made out for the statement that a nation cannot do without common thieves and homocidal ruffians. But an overwhelming case can be meade out for the statement that no nation can prosper or even continue to exist without heretics and advocates of shockingly immoral doctrines.

— George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish dramatist

An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having; and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.

— Mark Van Doren (1894-1973), American poet, critic

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.

— Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), English lexicographer, essayist and poet

It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). British philosopher

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of today.

— Party declaration of the Progressive Party of America, 1924

A government needs one hundred soldiers for every guerrilla it faces.

— Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar (1901-1973), Dictator of Cuba, quoted in El Caribe, Jan. 1, 1959

I am really concerned about America. In a way, we have the wrong leadership. But we also have the wrong followership. People don’t care about the truth.

— George Soros, billionaire financier and supporter of liberal causes

Thanks to AK for the tip.