John Twelve Hawks

True freedom is tolerant. It gives people the right to live and think in new ways.

Love is just another means of manipulation. We can use that emotion like we use hatred and fear.

Every new experience is unusual. The rest of life is just sleep and committee meetings.

Half the things you've been taught in school are just convenient fictions. History is a puppet show for childish minds.

If privacy had a gravestone it might read: “Don't Worry. This Was for Your Own Good.”

All of us fight a battle every day, but we just don’t know it. Love tries to defeat hatred. Bravery destroys fear.

You don't need to watch everyone if everyone believes they're being watched.

Even the most casual student of history realizes that human beings are greedy, impulsive, and cruel. But Bentham's prison showed us that societal control was possible with the right sort of technology. There was no need to have a policemen standing on every corner. All you need is a Virtual Panopticon that monitors your population. You aren't required to literally watch them all the time, but the masses have to accept the possibility and the inevitability of punishment. You need the structure, the system, the implicit threat that becomes a fact of life. When people discard their notions of privacy, they permit a peaceful society.

Peace and prosperity were possible only if people stopped asking new questions and accepted the available answers.

Freedom is the biggest myth ever created. It's a destructive, unachievable goal that has caused a great deal of pain. Very few people can handle freedom. A society is healthy and productive when it's under control.

Life is dangerous. That's what makes it interesting.

Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.