“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business.”

— Noam Chomsky , book Deterring Democracy

Deterring Democracy (1992), p. 357 http://books.google.com/books?id=uZui06DXqmcC&pg=PA357.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

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Noam Chomsky 334

american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Abbey's Road (1979)
Context: The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer." Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed — but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny.

“The aim is to replace economic oligarchies by the State, which has a will-to-power of its own and is quite as little concerned with the public good; and a will-to-power, moreover, which is not economic but military and therefore much more dangerous to any good folk who have a taste for staying alive. And on the bourgeois side what on earth is the sense of objecting to State control in economic affairs if one accepts private monopolies which have all the economic and technical disadvantages of State monopolies and possibly some others as well?”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 230

“I believe that for the small numbers of Jewish people in the United States, they exercise a tremendous amount of influence on the affairs of government …Yes, they exercise extraordinary control, and black people will never be free in this country until they are free of that kind of control …”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

Meet The Press interview https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jul/31/race.world1, The Guardian (April 1997)

“There were two modern ideas of the State which, they believed, had the same tendency to set up a despotic administrative system. One was the deification of the State and the absolute subordination of the individual to it. That was the solution of Fascism and, as they added later, of National Socialism. The other was the State of the common weal, or, as would be said today, the State of social services. It was the modern form of the ‘philanthropic’ State, in which the individual was controlled for his good by the State, down to the smallest details of life. The Bolshevist State, they considered, lay in the line of this conception.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), pp. 138-139

“Effective coordination of throughput required the placing of vigorous management controls over these despots.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 266; Cited in: Best (1990, p. 56).

“There are some despotic governments so filled with a feeling of insecurity that they regard the free life of culture as a threat to their existence. … On the other extreme is the kind of popular government which is so distrustful of all forms of distinction that it sees even in the cultivated individual a menace to its existence. Such states are likely to maintain a pressure which discourages cultural endeavor, although the pressure may be exerted through social channels.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Importance of Cultural Freedom,” p. 23.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

“Rivalries must be controlled, or they will throw all things into confusion; and there is nothing but despotism or a balance of power which can control them.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

No. 13
1790s, Discourses on Davila (1790)
Context: Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist. But if unlimited or unbalanced power of disposing property, be put into the hands of those who have no property, France will find, as we have found, the lamb committed to the custody of the wolf. In such a case, all the pathetic exhortations and addresses of the national assembly to the people, to respect property, will be regarded no more than the warbles of the songsters of the forest. The great art of law-giving consists in balancing the poor against the rich in the legislature, and in constituting the legislative a perfect balance against the executive power, at the same time that no individual or party can become its rival. The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries. The executive and the legislative powers are natural rivals; and if each has not an effectual control over the other, the weaker will ever be the lamb in the paws of the wolf. The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism. There is no other alternative. Rivalries must be controlled, or they will throw all things into confusion; and there is nothing but despotism or a balance of power which can control them.

“Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens and all unable to take its prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of despotic military governments for the States and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions; no classes excluded from suffrage; and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the Constitution and laws, and of sincere attachment to the constitutional Government of the United States.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

Letter to August Belmont (May 30, 1868), in J. W. Schuckers, The Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase, (1874). p. 585.

“Jews have always controlled the business (...). The motion picture influence of the United States and Canada (...) is exclusively under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Source: The Dearborn Independent, February 1921

“In China, the state controls the corporations, whereas in the United States, the corporations control the state.”

Ian Bremmer (1969) American political scientist

"Dambisa Moyo's 6 Favorite Books," http://theweek.com/article/index/212693/dambisa-moyos-6-favorite-books The Week (March 4, 2011).

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