• “In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think … but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.” ~William F. Buckley (1925-2008)
  
  Advertisements

• “[T]o say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.” ~William F. Buckley Jr.
  

• “We are made to ask what it is that political democracy gives us. The system is utilitarian. But is it a fit object of faith and hope?” ~William F. Buckley, Jr.
  

• “when both can’t be true. In 1946, in the days after World War II, presidential advisor Bernard Baruch said, “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” Variations have been uttered by U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and others. Today this seemingly indisputable truth no longer holds. Propaganda is indistinguishable from fact and we find ourselves living in the frightening pages of a George Orwell novel.” ~William F. Buckley Jr., Buckley vs. Vidal: The Historic 1968 ABC News Debates
  

• “We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.” ~William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)
  

• “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover there are are other views.” ~William F. Buckley, Jr.
  

Insights

• “Without education we are in the horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.” —G. K. Chesterton, English writer (1874-1936)

• “I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.” —William F. Buckley, American author and commentator (1925-2008)
  

Historical Insights

• “To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.” —American teacher, writer and philosopher Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)

• “Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.” —German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1834)

• “Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.” —American author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)

Modern Wisdom

• “Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.” —National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)

• “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” —Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

Reasonable insights . . .

• “Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.” —French economist, statesman and author Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

• “With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” —economist Fredrich von Hayek (1899-1992)

• “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” —commentator, author and founder of National Review William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)