Theodor Adorno, Education After Auschwitz, 18 April 1966
"They defended him, verbally and physically, every time he committed one of his criminal acts. They went blithely on past the suffering of all the bombing victims, the prisoners in the concentration camps, and the religious persecutors, because a different regime would have meant the end of their power."
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947
"Against such foolishness we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the foolish person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.
In all this the foolish person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.
Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome foolishness."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, executed on April 9, 1945
"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”
E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2010
The lust for money and power is indifferent to whom it sickens and kills.
It knows and serves only itself.
But the Devil sees and desires you, to ravage, possess, and consume you.
And there are those who are attracted to such ardent devotion, and yearn to give their hearts over to darkness.
They hold out their hand, and he entwines his fingers with theirs tightly, and they are his.
It's the fashion of the day. All the finest people are doing it.
Stocks did a fairly impressive pop and flop today, but managed to come back to unchanged in the last hour.
It's doesn't matter if the market is sound, what matters is that it looks good.
Gold and silver rallied, with gold going out on a recent closing high.
The Dollar took a dive in that same last hour of trading.
What new knowledge penetrated the mind of the market in the late afternoon.
We mere mortals can only wonder.
Let's see what happens tomorrow, in the markets and the world. Perhaps goodness will finally prevail..
But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil.
Even if we are only a few, a happy few, who will remain standing.
Have a pleasant evening.
