harmprinciple

[harmprinciple]

“What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.”

— George Eliot, Adam Bede

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[harmprinciple]

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been deceived long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the deception. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The deception has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (via liberatingreality)

[harmprinciple]

[harmprinciple]

https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/perpetual-curse-of-the-warrior-mindset/

[harmprinciple]

[harmprinciple]

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

— Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Whitney v. California [1927]

[harmprinciple]

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

— Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

[harmprinciple]

War is like a wild elephant. It carries the rider where it wants, not where <he wants to go.

— Randolph Bourne

[harmprinciple]

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

— Carl Sagan

[harmprinciple]

[harmprinciple]