Dissidence Quotes

“So that in the nature of man,
we find three principal causes of quarrel:

First, Competition;
Secondly, Dissidence;
Thirdly, Glory.

The first, maketh men invade for Gain;
the second, for Safety;
and the third, for Reputation.

The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters of other men's persons, wives, children and cattle;
the second, to defend them;
the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name.”
― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“They ordered the extermination
of all minds they couldn't control”
― Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew from Concrete

“To paraphrase Hannah Arendt—as portrayed in the recently released movie of the same name—the Nazi war criminal’s actions stemmed from her well-known phrase “banality of evil,” not as a result of mental illness but as a result of a lack of thinking. Their greatest error was delegating the process of thinking and decision-making to their higher ups. In Rudolf Höss’s case, this would have been his superiors, particularly Heinrich Himmler.

To many this conclusion is troubling, for it suggests that if everyday, “normal,” sane men and women are capable of evil, then the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust and other genocides could be repeated today and into the future.

Yet, this is exactly the lesson we must learn from the war criminals at Nuremberg. We must be ever wary of those who do not take responsibility for their actions. And we ourselves must be extra vigilant, particularly in this day of accelerated technological power, heightened state surveillance, and global corporate reach, that we do not delegate our thinking to others.”
― Thomas Harding

“The worst of all was to be faced with the interrogation technique of Thirty Seconds. The interrogator would say something and you had to respond quickly, without once repeating yourself or using the personal pronoun. Very few dissidents could last the full thirty seconds, and a refusal to comply was taken as equal proof of dissidence.”
― H.M. Forester, The Dissidents

“Okay, so I’m not exactly a morning person, but first impressions should never have to be made before dawn.”
― Jamie Canosa, Dissidence

“Connor hands shiny black guns to both me and Peter.
I’m pretty sure that if the best description of the weapon I can come up with is black and shiny, then I probably shouldn’t be handling it.”
― Jamie Canosa, Dissidence

“All you had to do was crack up and beg to see the Governor; grovel at his feet and admit to being a dissident; heartily repent your sins, and volunteer for elective brain surgery.”
― H.M. Forester, The Dissidents

“Their methods were especially crude and most of these former friends were now born again model citizens; lobotomized; or burnt out shells.”
― H.M. Forester, The Dissidents

“المثقف من حمل الحقيقة في وجه القوة ('cultured from carrying the truth in the face of power')”
― Noam Chomsky

“The perennial lot of human beings and human societies is animosities, antagonisms, and acrimonies. Power, venality, bitterness, and cynicism result in unavoidable conflict, cleavages, schisms, and disharmonies in human affairs. Erosion of standards and values creates disaffection, disillusionment, dissidence, and social instability.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“In all these forms of disavowal, nay-saying and denial, what is at work is not a dialectic of negativity or the 'work of the negative'. It is no longer a question of a thought critical of reality, but of a subversion of reality in its principle, in its very self-evidence. The greater the positivity, the more violent is the - possibly silent - denial. We are all dissidents of reality today, clandestine dissidents most of the time.
If thought cannot be exchanged for reality, then the immediate denial of reality becomes the only reality-based thinking. But this denial does not lead to hope, as Adorno would have it: 'Hope, as it emerges from reality by struggling against it to deny it, is the only manifestation of lucidity.' Whether for good or for ill, this is not true.
Hope, if we were still to have it, would be hope for intelligence of - for insight into - good. Now, what we have left is intelligence of evil, that is to say, intelligence not of a critical reality, but of a reality that has become unreal by dint of positivity, that has become speculative by dint of simulation.
Because it is there to counter a void, the whole enterprise of simulation and information, this aggravation of the real and of knowledge of the real, merely gives rise to an evergreater uncertainty. Its very profusion and relentlessness simply spreads panic. And that uncertainty is irredeemable, as it is made up of all the possible solutions.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“You think of dead lakes overflowing with corpses, of police stations where the rich lock up the poor, of palaces where those who follow orders torture those who refuse to. You think of distraught lovers, abandoned friends and absent parents. Of lapsed treaties and photographs that are seen and forgotten, regardless of the walls they hang on.”
― Almeida maali

“La falsità del sistema Copernicano non deve essere in conto alcuno messa in dubbio, e massime da noi Cattolici, havendo la inregragabile autorità delle Scritture Sacre, interpretate da I maestri sommi in teologia, il concorde assenso de’ quali ci rende certi della stabilità della terra, posta nel centro, e della mobilità del sole intorno ad essa. Le congetture poi per le quali il Copernico et altri suoi seguaci hanno profferito il contrario si levono tutte con quell saldissimo argumento preso dalla onnipotenza di Iddio, la quale potendo fare in diversi, anzi in infiniti, modi quallo che alla nostra oppinione e osservazione par fatto in un tal particolare, non doviamo volere abbreviare la mano di Dio, e tenacemente sostenere quello in che possiamo essere ingannati.…D’Arcetri, li 29 Marzo 1641.

(Le Opere Di Galileo Galilei, Vol. XVIII, Firenze, G. Barbèra – Editore, 1968, p. 316)

The falsity of the Copernican system should not in any way be called into question, above all, not by Catholics, since we have the unshakeable authority of the Sacred Scripture, interpreted by the most erudite theologians, whose consensus gives us certainty regarding the stability of the Earth, situated in the center, and motion of the sun around the Earth. The conjectures employed by Copernicus and his followers in maintaining the contrary thesis are all sufficiently rebutted by that most solid argument deriving from the omnipotence of God. He is able to bring about in different ways, indeed, in an infinite number of ways, things that, according to our opinion and observation, appear to happen in one particular way. We should not seek to shorten the hand of God and boldly insist on something beyond the limits of our competence... D'Arcetri, March 29, 1641.”
― Galileo Galilei, Le opere di Galileo Galilei 1897 [Hardcover]