Theodore Kaczynski Quotes (49 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Answer given when he was asked if he was afraid of losing his mind in prison. Interview with Ted Kaczynski http://web.archive.org/web/20061003044754/www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk/profiles/ted.html
Interviews

Mountain , Nature , Sense , Memory

“In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"The Motives of Scientists", item 87
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Effort , Time

“And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Autonomy", item 43
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Sense , Animals , Fight

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.
"Control of Human Behavior", item 145
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

People , Way , Imagination , Science

“I must tell you that mathematicians are not scientists, they are artists…. Apart from the most elementary mathematics, like arithmetic or high school algebra, the symbols, formulas and words of mathematics have no meaning at all. The entire structure of pure mathematics is a monstrous swindle, simply a game, a reckless prank. You may well ask: "Are there no renegades to reveal the truth?" Yes, of course. But the facts are so incredible that no one takes them seriously. So the secret is in no danger.”

Theodore Kaczynski

The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLqrVCi3l6E
Interviews

Truth , Secret , School , Game

“Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Feelings of Inferiority", item 12
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Personality

“Its is important, too, to realize that deadly violence among primitives is not even remotely comparable to modern warfare. When primitives fight, two little bands of men shoot arrows or swing war-clubs at one another because they want to fight; or because they are defending themselves, their families, or their territory. In the modern world soldiers fight because they have been brainwashed into believing in some kook ideology such as that of Nazism, socialism, or what American politicians choose to call "freedom". In any case the modern soldier is merely a pawn, a dupe who dies not for his family or his tribe but for the politicians who exploit him. If he's unlucky, maybe he does not die but comes home horribly crippled in a way that would never result from an arrow- or a spear-wound. Meanwhile, thousands of non-combatants are killed or mutilated. The environment is ravaged, not only in the war zone, but also back home, due to the accelerated consumption of natural resources needed to feed the war machine. In comparison, the violence of primitive man is relatively innocuous.”

Theodore Kaczynski

"The Truth about Primitive Life"
The Road to Revolution (2008)

Men , War , World , Family

“The ultimate goal of a revolutionary movement today must be the total collapse of the worldwide technological system.”

Theodore Kaczynski

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2016), p. 138

“The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call feelings of inferiority and oversocialization. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"The Psychology of Modern Leftism", item 9
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Feeling

“Many years ago I used to read books like, for example, Ernest Thompson Seton's Lives of Game Animals to learn about animal behavior. But after a certain point, after living in the woods for a while, I developed an aversion to reading any scientific accounts. In some sense reading what the professional biologists said about wildlife ruined or contaminated it for me. What began to matter to me was the knowledge I acquired about wildlife through personal experience.”

Theodore Kaczynski

in Defining Danger: American Assassins and the New Domestic Terrorists
Interviews

Books , Behavior , Game , Knowledge

“The techno-industrial system is exceptionally tough due to its so-called "democratic" structure and its resulting flexibility. Because dictatorial systems tend to be rigid, social tensions and resistance can be built up in them to the point where they damage and weaken the system and may lead to revolution. But in a "democratic" system, when social tension and resistance build up dangerously the system backs off enough, it compromises enough, to bring the tensions down to a safe level.”

Theodore Kaczynski

"Why The System Is Tough", point 4
Hit Where It Hurts (2002)

“In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one's physical needs.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Surrogate Activities", item 40
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Effort

“Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Sources Of Social Problems", item 53
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Communication , Problem , Change

“It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"The Nature of Freedom", item 94
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Freedom

“A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Disruption Of The Power Process In Modern Society", item 64
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

People , Sense , Affliction , Appearance

“The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Restriction on Freedom is Unavoidable in Industrial Society", item 119
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Health

“People … can think of nothing better to do than to continue attacking particular evils while vaguely hoping that their work will somehow help to solve the overall problem of technology. In reality their work is counterproductive, because it distracts attention from the technological system itself as the underlying source of the evils and leads people to focus instead on problems of limited significance that moreover cannot be permanently solved while the technological system continues to exist.”

Theodore Kaczynski

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2016), p. 1

People , Hope , Problem , Thinking

“The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don't think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Strategy", item 180
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

People , Understanding , Thinking

“To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Control of Human Behavior", item 160
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Life , Way , Thinking , Science

“There are two kinds of morality—the kind of morality that one imposes on oneself and the kind of morality that one imposes on others.”

Theodore Kaczynski

For the first kind of morality, that is, for self-restraint, I have the greatest respect. The second kind of morality I do not respect except when it constitutes self-defense. (For example, when women say that rape and wife-beating are immoral, that is self-defense.) I have noticed that the people who try hardest to impose moral code on others (not in self-defense) are often the least careful to abide by that moral code themselves.
"Morality and Revolution"
The Road to Revolution (2008)

“And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors
"Autonomy", paragraph 43
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Animals , Sense

“It seems amazing that those who advocate energy conservation haven't noticed what happens: As soon as some energy is freed up by conservation, the technological world-system gobbles it up and demands more. No matter how much energy is provided, the system always expands rapidly until it is using all available energy, and then it demands still more.”

Theodore Kaczynski

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015), p. 56

World

“As technology progresses and globalization grows more pervasive, the world-system becomes ever more complex and more tightly coupled, so that a catastrophic breakdown has to be expected sooner or later.”

Theodore Kaczynski

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015), p. 49

World

“Where (as today) problems of transportation and communication do not constitute effective limitations on the size of the geographical regions over which self-propagating systems operate, natural selection tends to create a world in which power is mostly concentrated in the possession of a relatively small number of global self-propagating systems.”

Theodore Kaczynski

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015), p. 47