“One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education… The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.”

—  Eleanor Roosevelt , My Day

11 May 1943
My Day (1935–1962)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education… The second way of enslaving a people is to s…" by Eleanor Roosevelt?
Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Eleanor Roosevelt 148
American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady… 1884–1962

Related quotes

John Quincy Adams photo

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)
L. Ron Hubbard photo

“THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Lecture: "Off the Time Track" (June 1952) as quoted in Journal of Scientology issue 18-G, reprinted in Technical Volumes of Dianetics & Scientology Vol. 1, p. 418.

Gretchen Rubin photo

“One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Tony Benn photo

“I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralize them.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).
2000s

Ray Bradbury photo

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)
Context: There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Georges Bataille photo

“I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge

Abraham Lincoln photo

“If two men are adrift at sea on a plank which will bear up but one, the law justifies either in pushing the other off. I never had to struggle to keep a negro from enslaving me, nor did a negro ever have to fight to keep me from enslaving him.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
Context: The proposition that there is a struggle between the white man and the negro contains a falsehood. There is no struggle. If there was, I should be for the white man. If two men are adrift at sea on a plank which will bear up but one, the law justifies either in pushing the other off. I never had to struggle to keep a negro from enslaving me, nor did a negro ever have to fight to keep me from enslaving him. They say, between the crocodile and the negro they go for the negro. The logical proportion is therefore; as a white man is to a negro, so is a negro to a crocodile; or, as the negro may treat the crocodile, so the white man may treat the negro. The 'don't care' policy leads just as surely to nationalizing slavery as Jeff Davis himself, but the doctrine is more dangerous because more insidious.

“People kill nonhuman animals for food, for their skins, and sometimes just for fun. We enslave animals and force them to work for us. We experiment on them and justify their suffering in terms of our advantage. Because most of us want to be able to view ourselves as good people (and, perhaps more importantly, because we want others to view us as good people), we may be motivated to view nonhumans in such a way that these activities are rendered morally unproblematic. One way to do this is to view other animals as utterly different from us.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 111

Adolf Hitler photo

“The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode their rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which those changes can be reversed.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Fake quote, according to snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/hitler-control-quote/ (11 Jan 2016)
Misattributed

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo

“Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Speech to the House of Commons (January 29, 1828).

Related topics