Conspiracy Quotes
More Conspiracy Quotes
Civilisation is a conspiracy.
Buchan, John, 1st BaronTweedsmuir— 1916 The Power-House, ch.3,'Tells of a Midsummer Night'.
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, themost self-conscious people inthe world, and themost addictedtothebeliefthattheothernations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.
Henry James— 1879 Hawthorne, ch.6.
There is, then, over the affairs of the armya universal conspiracy of silence, of childlike mysteries, of clannishness, routine and intrigue.
— 1910 L'Arme e nouvelle.
Decency is Indecency's conspiracy of silence.
George Bernard Shaw— 1903 Man and Superman,'Maxims for Revolutionists: Decency'.
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
John Hoyer Updike— 1980 Problems,'How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time'.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
frederick douglass— Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. (April 1886)
I think the women, therefore, must be concerned with these values, and I return to my statement that if a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
— Remarks at Fourth Annual Republican Women's National Conference (6 March 1956).
"There's nothing wrong with the word conspiracy. It just means 'to breathe together'."
janeane garofalo— Majority Report, November 10, 2004 broadcast
Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.
john hagee— Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude to War (revised 2007 ed.), Lake Mary, Fla.: Frontline, 23 January 2007, p. 114, ISBN 978-1599790893, OCLC 76820742
In reality, a person questioning the existence of the Satanic conspiracy is merely pointing out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. In that case, one can understand why the emperor's tailors get upset and suggest the person doing the pointing is a tool of the devil. Then the question comes down to one of whether the crowd will believe the evidence they have before them, or if they will buy into the tailors' fantasies.
michael a. stackpole— Stackpole. "The Pulling Report". Retrieved on 2007-05-27.
One reason you tend to doubt conspiracy theories when you've worked in government is because you know government is not nearly competent enough to carry off elaborate theories. It's a banal explanation, but imagine how efficient it would need to be.
— Quoted in Morello, Carol (2004-10-07). "Conspiracy Theories Flourish on the Internet". The Washington Post. p. B1.
There came a point when if a conspiracy was that powerful and subtle it became pointless to worry about it.
iain banks— Chapter 5 “Kiss the Blade” section III (p. 149)
"History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy"
zbigniew brzezinski— The New York Times, January 18, 1981 [1]
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.
Henry James— Hawthorne, ch. VI: England and Italy
In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.
charles krauthammer— Column, October 19, 2007, "Pelosi’s Armenian Gambit" at jewishworldreview.com.
It had long been established in the Civil Worlds that public business was to be transparent, and personal business opaque; but it was as well recognised that the two would always have a turbulent interface, and that the clique, the caucus, and the conspiracy were as ineradicable features of civility as the council or the committee.
ken macleod— Chapter 9 “Red Sun Circle” (pp. 136-137)
Following Korzybski , I put things in probabilities, not absolutes ... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics , to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics , ideology , jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory .
robert anton wilson— Interview in High Times (2003)
You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.
robert anton wilson— Introduction, p. 16
You need the "is of identity" to describe conspiracy theories. Korzybski would say that proves that illusions, delusions, and "mental" illnesses require the "is" to perpetuate them. (He often said, "Isness is an illness.") Korzybski also popularized the idea that most sentences, especially the sentences that people quarrel over or even go to war over, do not rank as propositions in the logical sense, but belong to the category that Bertrand Russell called propositional functions. They do not have one meaning , as a proposition in logic should have; they have several meanings, like an algebraic function.
robert anton wilson— Language as Conspiracy, p. 277
The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.
— J. Edgar Hoover, as quoted in The Elks Magazine (August 1956).
The self must be a tense bow. It must struggle with opposites rather than harmonize them, rather than turn the tension over to the great instruments of last manhood the skilled bow unbenders and Jesuits of our days, the psychiatrists, who, in the same spirit and as part of the same conspiracy of modernity as the peace virtuosos, reduce conflict.
Allan Bloom— Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 198
Josephus … in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple … ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ.
— Origen (c. 185–c. 254), Origin Against Celus, Book I, Chapter XLVII
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.
— Hawthorne, ch. VI: England and Italy
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
ralph waldo emerson— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)
Josephus … in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple … ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ.
— Origen (c. 185–c. 254), Origin Against Celus, Book I, Chapter XLVII.
Following Korzybski , I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory.
— Robert Anton Wilson, in an interview in High Times (2003)
The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.
j. edgar hoover— The Elks Magazine (August 1956)
The best Party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the Nation. They put every body else out of their Protection. Like the Jews to the Gentiles, all others are the Offscowrings of the World.
savile, george, 1st marquess of halifax— Of Parties
Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.
kenneth rexroth— "Introduction"
