"When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Frederic Bastiat

"Economic Sophisms". Book by Frédéric Bastiat, Second series, 1848.^[[1] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1412473]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20482687

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” ― Frederick Douglass

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17887604

"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered. But never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport."

• Christopher Hedges American journalist on assignment in Gaza

"There will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation." -- MALCOLM X, 1965

Context: https://lemmy.world/post/25901009

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. -- Malcolm X

Title Edit2: "f -> If, fixed error on title; spacing

cross-posted from: https://szmer.info/post/5995617

David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25391624

"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine." -- William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

Not sure where he said this, or even if he truly said this. His work has been almost completely lost to time, and it's hard to tell if what's left is even accurate. That said, Wikipedia credits this quote to a book from Princeton University press. The text for anyone who can't read it:

"One hundred years is the limit of a long life. Not one in a thousand ever attains it. Suppose there is one such person. Infancy and feeble old age take almost half of his time. Rest during sleep at night and what is wasted during the waking hours in the daytime take almost half of that. Pain and sickness, sorrow and suffering, death (of relatives) and worry and fear take almost half of the rest. In the ten and some years that is left, I reckon, there is not one moment in which we can be happy, at ease without worry. This being the case, what is life for? What pleasure is there? For beauty and abundance, that is all. For music and sex, that is all. But th

If I remember rightly, this is from Colin From Accounts.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24419386

“The ultimate test of a society’s freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it’s how it treats its dissidents.” - Glenn Greenwald