The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
Context: The creative faculty, the god-power, is not used here with anything less than literalness. When beauty was created by a godly mind, beauty existed, as surely as the paintings of Botticelli or the concerti of Vivaldi exist. When mercy was created, mercy existed. When guilt was created, guilt existed. Out of a meaningless and pointless existence, we have made meaning and purpose; but since this creative act happens only when we relax after great strain, we feel it as 'pouring into us' from elsewhere. Thus, we do not know our own godhood and we are perpetually swindled by those who assure us that it is indeed elsewhere, but they can give us access to it, for a reasonable fee. And when we as a species were ignorant enough to be duped in that way, the swindlers went one step further, invented original sin and other horrors of that sort, and made us even more 'dependent' upon them.
“Their ignorance and credulity made them easy dupes.”
Source: 1900s, A History of the American People, Vol. 9 (1902), p. 46
Context: Adventurers swarmed out of the North to cozen, beguile, and use them. These men were ‘carpet baggers’… They gained the confidence of the negroes, obtained for themselves the most lucrative offices, and lived upon the public treasury, public contracts, and their easy control of affairs… For the Negroes there was nothing but occasional allotments of abandon or forfeited land, the pay of petty offices, a per diem allowances as members of the conventions and the state legislatures which their new masters made business for, or the wages of servants in the various offices of administration. Their ignorance and credulity made them easy dupes.
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Woodrow Wilson 156
American politician, 28th president of the United States (i… 1856–1924Related quotes
Full Employment in a Free Society (1944) Pt. 7
“It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word “intuition.””
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 18 “Collision” section 4, p. 377
Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: The people became convinced—being ignorant, stupid and credulous—that the church held the keys of heaven and hell. The foundation for the most terrible mental tyranny that has existed among men was in this way laid. The Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its power. It resorted to every possible form of fraud; it perverted every good instinct of the human heart; it rewarded every vice; it resorted to every artifice that ingenuity could devise, to reach the highest round of power. It tortured the accused to make them confess; it tortured witnesses to compel the commission of perjury; it tortured children for the purpose of making them convict their parents; it compelled men to establish their own innocence; it imprisoned without limit; it had the malicious patience to wait; it left the accused without trial, and left them in dungeons until released by death. There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not commit,—no cruelty that it did not practice,—no form of treachery that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. It did all that organization, cunning, piety, self-denial, heroism, treachery, zeal and brute force could do to enslave the children of men. It was the enemy of intelligence, the assassin of liberty, and the destroyer of progress.
To a Cabaret Dancer
The Book of Repulsive Women (1915)
Context: p>We watched her come with subtle fire
And learned feet,
Stumbling among the lustful drunk
Yet somehow sweet. We saw the crimson leave her cheeks
Flame in her eyes;
For when a woman lives in awful haste
A woman dies. The jests that lit our hours by night
And made them gay,
Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul
And fouled its play.</p
Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. IV Section I - Speculation on the Doctrine of the Depravity of Human Reason
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory