Gary Kasparov

[on Twitter, Dec. 13, 2016  https://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/808750564284702720]

The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

Gore Vidal

There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Adlai Stevenson

[ https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II ]

During one of his presidential campaigns, a woman says, "Governor, you have the vote of every thinking person!"

Stevenson replies, "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"

Tim Gowers

[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/is-massively-collaborative-mathematics-possible/
(Seen cited in the Introduction of Tom Malone's book Superminds)]

[Why collaborate?]

(i) Sometimes luck is needed to have the idea that solves a problem. If lots of people think about a problem, then just on probabilistic grounds there is more chance that one of them will have that bit of luck.

(ii) ... different people know different things, so the knowledge that a large group can bring to bear on a problem is significantly greater than the knowledge that one or two individuals will have....

(iii) Different people have different characteristics when it comes to research. Some like to throw out ideas, others to criticize them, others to work out details, others to re-explain ideas in a different language, others to formulate different but related problems, others to step back from a big muddle of ideas and fashion some more coherent picture out of them, and so on....

Cory Doctorow / Thomas Piketty

[Cory Doctorow in a review of Piketty's Capital and Ideology
https://boingboing.net/2019/09/15/brahmin-left-merchant-right.html]

[Piketty notes that] elections are increasingly won by "none of the above" (that is, the decisive factor isn't who voters vote for, it's which voters don't vote at all).

Michael Shermer

We humans have a strong tendency to overidentify patterns and causation, and often erroneously locate meaningful patterns in meaningless 'noise' and overattribute agency (conscious intentional action) to inanimate objects and to random natural events.

Tim Wu

[From The Curse of Bigness (2018)]

Extreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding an appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership....

If we learned one thing from the Gilded Age, it should have been this: The road to fascism and dictatorship is paved with failures of economic policy to serve the needs of the general public.

Molly Ivins

['Reindeer are Counted Better Than Homeless', Dec. 22, 1992 (included in Nothin' but Good Times Ahead)]

Wouldn't you think some sociologist would have done a comparative study by now to prove, as I have always suspected, that there is a higher proportion of Undeserving Rich than Undeserving Poor?

Robert T. Lundy

['From Nostradamus to Alan Greenspan' (poem in 'Analog' July/August 2012)]

Logic and reason 

Are never in season.

Attention is grabbed by confusion and fear.

Thomas Paine

[Age of Reason and the 'Introduction' by Philip Foner]

About Paine (per Foner):

Anti-slavery writings starting in 1775.

With Ben Franklin, co-authored the Pennsylvania constitution, "by far the most advanced state constitution adopted during the American revolution." (included universal [male] suffrage, democratic representation, religious freedom)

Later defended attacks on the Pennsylvania constitution's "cardinal sin of allowing the common people according to their number a voice in their government."

In the Pennsylvania legislature in 1780, wrote the "first legislative measure passed in America for the emancipation of slaves."

Helped found the Bank of Pennsylvania.

Aided the French revolution — advised on the constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, wrote Rights of Man to answer critics.

Advocated public education, welfare, pensions, funeral expenses, progressive income tax, property tax, treaties, reduction of the military (esp. the navy).

Became convinced that to preserve republican principles, it was necessary to destroy the priesthood.

Was a Deist, not an atheist.

Introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners.

 - - - - - - - Paine quotes from Foner's Introduction - - - - - - 

[Paine himself said he went] marching through the Christian forest with an axe.

I seldom passed five minutes ... in which I did not acquire some knowledge.

Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?

Primogeniture [is] unnatural and unjust and a great waste of national wealth.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [from Age of Reason] - - - - - - - - - 

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

I do not believe in the creed ... [of] any church ... My own mind is my own church.

A revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion.

Organized religion was set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit.

Every church accuses other churches of unbelief. I disbelieve them all.

[T]he Church has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

[A]ll my opponents resort to ... Scripture evidence and Bible authority.... [They] have agreed in nothing but that Paine understands [the Bible] not.