The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
The Common Good (1998)
Similar quotations can be found in:
Freedom
You can also do a search for more quotes by Noam Chomsky
This site serves as an archive of quotations dealing with religion and philosophy. Specific topics covered include, but are not limited to: God, faith, reason, skepticism, atheism, agnosticism, fundamentalism, extremism. The quotes are chosen on the basis of my finding them interesting - regardless of whether I agree with them or not. This is by no means an exhaustive collection, although it does grow as I add quotes regularly.
Suggestions? Feel free to email me with quotations you think could be added. I can't guarantee that I will respond to each message and, please, be sure to include a full citation with each quote. There are a lot of sites out there that have many quotes without citations, thus preventing readers from being able to trace the authorship. I have very few of those and don't want any more, if I can help it.
Copyright © 2003 - 2004 by Austin Reed Cline