Theodore Kaczynski citations (51 citations)

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 <br class="br">Interviews

“Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.”

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Theodore Kaczynski livre Industrial Society and Its Future

"How Some People Adjust", item 81
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

“The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible.”

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Theodore Kaczynski

Interview from primitivism.com http://www.primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm <br class="br">Interviews

“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. 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.”

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Theodore Kaczynski

"Morality and Revolution"
The Road to Revolution (2008)

“There are many people today who see that modern society is heading toward disaster in one form or another, and who moreover recognize technology as the common thread linking the principal dangers that hang over us.”

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Theodore Kaczynski

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

“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.”

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Theodore Kaczynski livre Industrial Society and Its Future

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

“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).”

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Theodore Kaczynski livre Industrial Society and Its Future

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

“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.”

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Theodore Kaczynski livre 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)

“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.”

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Theodore Kaczynski

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

“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.”

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Theodore Kaczynski livre Industrial Society and Its Future

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

“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.”

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Theodore Kaczynski

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