Thoughts on Freedom, Civil Liberties, War and Iraq

Published on Sun 13th Mar 2005

Josef Stalin: "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

Hermann Goering: "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: "Here the ways of men part; if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire."

Albert Einstein: "He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake; science for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilisation should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable an ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

Adolf Hitler 1 Feb 1933: "This Government will regard it as it's first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."

Eleanor Roosevelt: "When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Howard Thurman: "During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism."

Bertrand Russell: "Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."

Theodore Roosevelt (1918): "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Colonel T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia): "The people of England have been led into a trap in Mesopotamia from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere and incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our Administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our Imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, both Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the Civil Administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the Army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities."

Rudolf Hoess, SS commandant at Auschwitz, in his statement to the War Crimes Tribunal: "This so called ill treatment and torture in detention centres, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees"