“To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.”

Section 56
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Context: It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.
Context: The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life.... For self-sacrifice is an unreasonable act.... All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world.... by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it.... To rely on the evidence of senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.

Thoughts Upon Slavery (1774)
Context: I deny that villany is ever necessary. It is impossible that it should ever be necessary for any reasonable creature to violate all the laws of justice, mercy, and truth. No circumstances can make it necessary for a man to burst in sunder all the ties of humanity. It can never be necessary for a rational being to sink himself below a brute. A man can be under no necessity of degrading himself into a wolf. The absurdity of the supposition is so glaring, that one would wonder any one can help seeing it.

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Source: Philosophy of Education, p. 86.

The Yogi book: I really didn't say everything I said!, Workman Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0761110909, p. 10.
Said on Yogi Berra day in 1947 in St. Louis. By his account, he asked a teammate to write a speech, and he misspoke, saying "necessary" instead of "possible."
Yogiisms

Source: Philosophies from an old Journal

Methodical Realism

Considerations by the Way
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)