Will Eisner: Trending quotes

“Graves: Now…why would the elders of Zion in their protocols of world domination devote so much time to the ‘’’mundane’’’ details of financial management??”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.86

World , Time

“At last we have an unquestionable disclosure that erases any claim to legitimacy of the “protocols of the Elders of Zion”!”

Will Eisner

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)
Context: Audience member: At last we have an unquestionable disclosure that erases any claim to legitimacy of the “protocols of the Elders of Zion”!

“Maurice Joly: Your honor, I have not written a lampoon here…this book’s delineations are applicable to all governments!
Prosecutor: No, your honor.. this man has written a tract that barely conceals a horrid defamation of our emperor!!
Maurice Joly: No! No! No! This book provides a call to conscience…a perspective for citizens concerned about the harsh realities of the conditions in which they live…
Furthermore, my book shows how the despotism taught by Machiavelli in “The Prince” could, by artifice and evil ways, impose itself on our society.
Prosecutor: No, your honor. It does more than that… for by ‘’’using’’’ the despotism of Machiavelli’’’ asa comparison, Joly seeks to show that Bonaparte, our sovereign, and an evil Italian are ‘’’the same’’’ in thought and deed!
Maurice Joly: If the reader sees a relationship to the infamy of the emperor, am I to blame?
Judge: Maurice Joly, I charge you with the crime of defamation! Of suggesting through shameful means that our sovereign has led the public astray, degraded our nation and corrupted our morals! This is an infamy, sir!!
Judge: Therefore, Maurice Joly, this court sentences you to 15 months imprisonment.
Maurice Joly: This is unfair and an example of this despotic society under Louis Bonaparte!
Balif: Quiet! You’ve had your say!
Judge: The emperor’s police will immediately confiscate all copies of this book they can find!”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp.16-19

Books , Way , Reality , Evil

“Graves:…unless, of course, this was not written by the elders at all…as we suspect!”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.87

“Protocols:
supplementary budget, and all this ends up in accordance with the sum of the total addition, the annual departure from the normal reaches up as much as 50 percent in a year, and so the annual budget is trebled in ten years….
Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who, instead of taking from their subects by a temporary tax, come begging with outstretched palm of our bankers…the Goy states go on in persisting in putting more on to themselves to that they must inevitably perish, drained by voluntary blood-letting.
Graves: Their interest calculations are the same to support the financial dangers of loans!”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.84

Departure , Understanding , Support

“My early work in newspaper comics and comic books allowed me to entertain millions of readers weekly, but I always felt there was more to say. I pioneered the use of comics for instructional manuals for American soldiers, covering three major wars, and later used comics to educate grade school children. Both were heady responsibilities that I took very seriously. But I yearned to do still more with the medium. At an age when I could have "retired," I chose instead to create literary comics, than a decidedly oxymoronic term. Acceptance has not always been easy, but I have seen it arrive in my lifetime. It has been most gratifying to see the graphic novel and many of its exceptional creators gradually become an accepted part of the book world. I couldn't find a major publisher to take A Contract With God only a quarter century ago, and now graphic novels represent the book industry's fastest growing genre.”

Will Eisner

XIX-XX, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

God , War , Children , Books

“Dialogue in Hell:
First Dialogue”

Will Eisner

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)
Variant: Dialogue in Hell:
Twentieth Dialogue

Hell

“Graves: When copying the “Dialogues”…why would the :Protocols” alter “coups d'etat: to “revolution”?
Raslovlev: Obviously it was to address the Tsar’s concern over a Russian revolution, eh?”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.80

“Dialogue in Hell:
inscrutable…They never know if some enterprise already prepared will not descend on them from one day to the other.
A Prince whose power is founded upon a democratic base, must speak carefully, albeit popularly. If necessary he must not fear to speak like a demagogue, for after all he is the people, and he must have its passions…
You asked me a moment ago if I knew self-denial, if I would sacrifice myself for my people, relinquish the throne if necessary; now you have my answer, I can relinquish it as a martyr.”

Will Eisner

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

People , Fear , Hell , Passion

“Dialogue in Hell:
Thirteenth Dialogue

Machiavelli: This is because you do not understand, Montesquieu! How much impotence and even simplicity is found among the majority of men of European demagoguism. These tigers have souls of sheep, heads full of wind. Their dream is the absorption of the individual into a symbolic unity. They demand the complete realization of equality.”

Will Eisner

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Men , Dreams , Soul , Hell

“Dialogue in Hell:
Seventeenth Dialogue

Montesquieu:… Now I understand the apologue the god Vishnu; you have a hundred arms like the Hindu idol and each one of your fingers touches a spring. In the same way that you touch everything, are you also able to see everything?
Machiavelli: Yes, for I shall make of the police an institution so vast that in the heart of my kingdom half of the people shall see the other half…
…If, as I scarcely doubt, I succeed in attaining this result, here are some of the forms by which my police would manifest themselves abroad: men of pleasure and good company in the foreign courts, to keep an eye on the intrigues of the princes and of the exiled pretenders…the establishment of political newspapers in the great capitals, printers and book stores places in the same conditions and secretly subsidized.”

Will Eisner

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Men , God , People , Pleasure

“Golovinski: Mr. Rachkovsky, a Zionist congress met last year. I can simply fabricate a manifesto!
Rachkovsky: Not good enough…and that will take too much time!
I have a solution!
Here is an old book by someone named Maurice Joly. It appeared here in France in 1864… and four years ago our journalist Decyon tried to use it to attack Russia’s financial system.
Golovinski: The “Dialogue in hell between Machiavelli and Montesquie”!
Jolly’s book attacks Napoleon III’s government! It can be read as a plan for tyranny!
Rachkovsky: Exactly.
All you have to do is 'change this into a testament that emanates from the Jewish leaders…eh, Golovinski?
Golovinski: Ah, yes. A Jewish conspiracy! Yes, yes.”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.59

Books , Hell , Appearance , Change

“Zionist Aspirations
Dr. Weizmann on Future of Palestine.
Dr. Weizmann; the Zionist leader, who had just returned from the Conference at San Remo, in the course of a statement yesterday on the future of Palestine expressed his appreciation, and that of his fellow Zionists for the assistance rendered to their cause by The Times. The Balfour declaration, by being incorporated in the Treat with Turkey, had received international sanction. Dealing with the mandate conferred on Great Britain, he said:
There are still important details outstanding, such as the actual terms of the mandate and the question of boundaries in Palestine. There is the delimitation of the boundary between French Syria and Palestine, which will constitute the northern frontier and the eastern line of demarcation, adjoining Arab Syria.”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.67

Question , Time , Future

“The most extraordinary aspect of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not so much the history of its inception as that of its reception. That this fake was produced by a number of secret services and police of at least three countries, assembled from a collage of different texts, is by now a well-known fact-and Will Eisner tells it in full, taking into account the most recent research.
In one of my essays I identify other sources that scholars had not taken into account: for example, the Protocols “Jewish plan” for conquering the world follows, almost literally at times, the Jesuit plan as told by Eugene Sue first in Le juif errant, (1844-45) and later in Les myst’eres du people (1849-57)-the similarities are so great that one is tempted to conclude that Maurice Holy himself (the French satirist whose pamphlet Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, published in 1864, is considered to be the direct predecessor of the Protocols, and who is a figure in Eisner’s The Plot) had been inspired by Sue’s novels.”

Will Eisner

Umberto Eco, p. v
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

People , Secret , World , History

“Protocols:
Number 11, paras. 1,2
The state Council has been, as it were, the emphatic expression of the ruler; it will be, as the “show” part of the Legislative Corps what may be called the editorial committee of the alws and decrees of the ruler. Br> This, then, is the program of the new constitution. We shall make Law, Right, and Justice (1) in the guide of proposals to the Legislative Corps, (2) by the decrees of the president under the guise of general regulations, of orders of the Senate and of resolutions of the State Council in the guise of ministerial orders, (3) and in case a suitable occasion should arise, in the form of a revolution in the State.”

Will Eisner

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Justice , Law , Parting

“Count Dashkov: Ah, Mathieu Golovinski, I hear good things about you…I have need for a young man with your talents!
Golivinski: You flatter me, your honor, thank you! Thank you!
Count Dashkov: There is great concern at the tsar’s court these days.. his majesty is quite disturbed by the people’s unrest!
Count Dashkov: I am convinced there is a deep conspiracy afoot in Russia that is poisoning people’s minds.
This evil is a threat to the monarchy itself! But it must be suppressed with powerful weapons!
Golivinski: Weapons?
Count Dashkov: Documentation, my boy…proof of their villainous conspiracy! Proof is the weapon!’’’
And you are skilled at fashioning such weapons, my boy!
So…here, I am recommending you to general of the holy synod.
Golivinski: The synod is a Christian orthodoxy…it’s members are active in proselytizing
Count Dashkov: Exactly! They have been helping the tsar by bringing Christianity to the pagan peasants in the volga…from that office any information will be accepted without question by the public!
So…do you have any question or doubts about getting involved with them?
Golivinski: Oh no!! It matters little to me.
I serve loyally whoever pays me, sir.”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 40-42

People , Boy , Fashion , Question

“Dialogue in Hell:
Twenty-third through twenty-fifth dialogues

Machiavelli: The cult of the prince is a sort of religion and, like all possible religions, this cult prescribes contradictions and mysteries beyond reason.
…I wish my aims to be impenetrable, even to those who are closest to me. I would only communicate my projects when I gave the command for execution….
His counselors ask one another secretly what he will think of next. He personifies in their eyes the Providence whose ways are”

Will Eisner

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Religion , Way , Communication , Hell

“As the story unfolds it is at 55 Dropsie Avenue where Frimme Hersh deals with God; where the street singer fails to grasp his chance for gory. It is on Dropsie Avenue where a diminutive enemy defeats the super, and Willie comes of age. It is in an alley of Dropsie Avenue where Jacob Shtarkah tries to find the meaning of life. It is also on Dropsie Avenue, finally, where I undertake the biography of the street itself, through the physical evolution of the block, the rise and fall of the tenement building at No.55 and the ethnic and social changes of the stream of occupants.”

Will Eisner

XIV-XV, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Life , God , Age , Change

“Hitler: To what extend the whole existence of his [Jewish] people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION.”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 94-98

People , Lie

“Graphic novelist: Don’t you feel foolish accepting that lie?
Student 3: Well…well…ah, maybe the jews used this book to make their plans!
Student 4: Yeah.
Even if it is a fake! People should read the book because it reveals the jews!!
Graphic novelist: That doesn’t make sense, it…”

Will Eisner

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.124

People , Lie , Books , Feeling