Catherine the Great

The laws ought to be so framed as to secure the safety of every citizen as much as possible. … Political liberty does not consist in the notion that a man may do whatever he pleases; liberty is the right to do whatsoever the laws allow. … The equality of the citizens consists in that they should all be subject to the same laws.

Very early it was noticed that I had a good memory; therefore I was insistently tormented with learning everything by heart.

For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied – whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of.

Madame, you must be gay; only thus can life be endured. I speak from experience for I have had to endure much, and have only been able to endure it because I have always laughed whenever I had the chance.

Men make love more intensely at 20, but make love better, however, at 30.

You were in a mood to quarrel. Please inform me once the inclination passes.

The Russian parliament has condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.

Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

Economic control…is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served.

The rest of the world may associate May 1 with the struggle of American workers for basic rights…The U.S. calendar has a Labor Day, in September, celebrating the return to work after a vacation that is far briefer than in other industrial countries.

[living at the White House] This isn’t about us. There’s so much history here that no one family can claim this space as their own.

The process of shaping opinion, attitudes, and perceptions was termed the ‘engineering of consent’ by one of the founders of the modern public relations industry, Edward Bernays.

Our country, our people, and our laws have to be our top priority.

I do not feel that we should set up people as ‘models’; rather actions, thoughts, principles.

The point is that since this is a business-run society, it’s also a propaganda-oriented society, because business is committed to marketing. The highest value in business is to deceive people into getting something, taking something that they don’t want.

A figure who receives money from abroad for his political work, and thus serves some foreign interest, cannot be a politician in Russia.

Israel and its US backers would no doubt prefer for the Palestinian leadership to be immobilized in endless negotiations, while the concrete work of colonization proceeds – the traditional Zionist practice for a century.

An IMF study that investigated the profits of American banks…found that they were almost entirely dependent on implicit public subsidies. There’s a kind of a guarantee – it’s not on paper, but it’s an implicit guarantee – that if they get into trouble they will be bailed out.

Firstly, the use of our armed forces in the battlefield is a unique experience, a unique tool by which to improve our armed forces. No amount of military exercise could compare with the use of force in combat conditions.