As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

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Governments will use whatever technology is available to combat their primary enemy - their own population.

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The best defense against democracy is to distract people.

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Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

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That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.

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If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.

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Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself.

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There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.

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If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.

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It takes one minute to tell a lie, and an hour to refute it.

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