110 POLITICAL, ECONOMICAL and ETHICAL QUOTES by DR.
RODRIGUE TREMBLAY
Drawn from:
1.
“Ideologies and ideas are not only about the truth;
they are also about interests; — private and collective interests.
Therefore, ideologies and ideas are hard to change. And it can be
expected that new ideologies and new ideas will be resisted.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
2.
“Interests ride on the white
horses of ideas and ideologies.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
3.
“The little flame of truth can
hardly survive when there is a shower of lies and misinformation.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
4.
“The
fundamental purpose of life is to live fully and as morally as possible, and to
help others live their life fully and as morally as possible.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
5.
“The more moral and the more
altruistic a person is, the more he or she will be open to find true happiness.”
Rodrigue Tremblay (in “The Code for
Global Ethics”, p. 29)
6.
“Wealth is not the criteria of
real success, but happiness is. And nobody can be happy while hurting others or
being dishonest.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay, (in The Code for Global Ethics, pp. 88-89)
7.
“In the end, life is only a long succession of problems to be solved on
a daily basis.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
8.
“It is often in failure that we
begin to prepare for future success. Because we do things that we would not do
in times of contentment and satisfaction. The opposite is also true.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
9.
“Travelling
is an agreeable way to shuffle our mental cards.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
10.
“Morality
and religion are not the same thing. In fact, religion is a prism that tends to
skew morality in one's favor, in one group’s favor or in one nation’s favor;
often, what is good for one people is considered bad for others, and
conversely.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
11.
“People who make
hell on Earth often have the crazy idea that they are bound for a heaven after
death.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
12.
“State-sponsored
killing abroad or state-imposed capital punishment at home are both inimical to
humanist principles.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
13.
“Sometimes, one can get away with an illegal act, if it is legitimate;
sometimes, one can get away with an illegitimate act, if it is legal; but, it
is most difficult to get away with an act, which is both illegal and
illegitimate.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
14.
“While democratic societies should have a great tolerance for an
individual’s choice, they should not have a suicidal tolerance of intolerant
movements that openly threaten to abolish freedom and democracy.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
15.
“The
absence of intellectual freedom—and its corollary, censorship—is the biggest
enemy of human progress.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
16.
“When despotic
governments or other authorities deprive people of their natural right to
property, they ipso facto deprive them of their natural right to be free.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
17.
“It is
in the interest of any country to avoid giving power to idiots, to ignoramuses,
incompetents, devious and delusional characters or to demagogues. More
countries are destroyed by their own politicians than by invading armies.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
18.
“There is
nothing that says that inept, ignorant, incompetent and power-hungry
politicians cannot also turn out to be crazy and dangerous politicians.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
19.
“An incompetent
politician who surrounds himself with competent people can pull it off.
However, if he is dumb enough to surround himself with like-minded people,
failure becomes a certainty.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
20.
“Proselytizing or expansionist
ideologies, such as communism, fascism, colonialism, Christianism, Islamism and
Zionism, are powerful seeds of war. The more so, it seems, when one relies on
the exhortations of a self-serving
“holy” book. The first three ideologies nearly destroyed the Planet in
the 20th century, while the last three threaten to do the same in
the 21st century.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
21.
“Nowadays, a U.S. president who does not start a war abroad or who does not enlarge one
already in progress is open to criticism and is likely to suffer politically.
He must be seen less as a president than as a “commander-in-chief” —and even… as
a de facto emperor.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
22.
“Legally
created entities such as corporations are not moral agents; only breathing
individuals are; only they can adopt moral standards of conduct and be a source
of law.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
23.
“If
it is appropriate to introduce economic rationality into public debates, we
must be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater and make markets
what they are not, what they have never been and what they will never will be,
that is, perfect mechanisms for allocating resources.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
24.
“In
economics, we have seen
the emergence of a truly secular cult according to which the market is a kind
of omniscient god, omnipotent and infallible, which could serve as the only
collective instrument for achieving the common good and the collective
interest, and this, in all circumstances. Some believe that there is no
economic problem that markets, left alone, cannot solve on their own.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
25.
“It is always possible that a revolution will
make things worse for everybody, rather than improve things for some.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
26.
“The captain of a ship who does
not change course in the presence of insurmountable obstacles is not
'resolute'; he is rather showing myopic stupidity.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
27.
“There are periods when one can be forgiven
for thinking that the world is an madhouse, with the inmates in charge.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
28.
“Economic globalization transfers
the real power in our societies from legitimate elected officials to officers
of large corporations and of mega banks, and to owners of capital who, in turn,
use it to corrupt the political system.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
29.
“A constitution
is only good as long as the people in power, politicians, judges, etc., believe in its principles. If people in
power no longer believe in its principles, they will find a way to change it or
circumvent it. This is a major lesson of the history of democracy: democracies
do die and they are often replaced by tyrannies.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
30.
“Politicians
sometimes forget that, once elected, they are expected to serve all the people,
not just their narrow base of fanatical partisans. In that regard, their public
statements are very important because they give a clue to what type of public
servant the candidates will become once in power. Also, a candidate can easily
self-destruct if he or she forgets that, when talking to partisans, the entire
electorate is listening. Strong general statements, good or bad, remain in
people’s consciousness when time comes to vote.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
31.
“If persons in
power can do whatever they want, irrespective of due process, that country is
not a democracy. It may be a royalty, an empire or a dictatorship, but it is
not a democratic republic.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
32.
“The world should take notice when someone… with a
fanatic mind and with powerful means, pretends to receive his marching orders
from heaven.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
33.
“It is not faith that gives freedom; knowledge brings
freedom.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
34.
“The system of religions has played a central
role in the evolution of the human species. It just happens that our ancestors
invented the system of religions to solidify the cohesion of their communities
and… to justify the killing of their enemies.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
35.
“Religion is like the ring, which is placed in the nose
of an ox.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
36.
“In general, superstitions and religions are the
uneducated person's substitutes for scientific knowledge.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
37.
“Too often, when people should be thinking and acting,
they instead close their minds and start praying for a miracle.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
38.
“Praying can be good for good people, but can bad for
bad people, since prayers are only the reflection of one's thoughts.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
39.
“More than arguments, there is no greater persuader than events
themselves.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
40.
“No
other organizations, (except perhaps an army) but organized religions can mobilize large groups of people into congregations and
turn them into mind-numbed automatons, all too ready to follow orders.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
41.
“The three fundamental [modern] scientific discoveries
that intellectually destroyed geocentric religious views are:
— Galileo Galilei’s proof in 1632, that the Earth and human beings were
not the center of the Universe;
— Charles Darwin’s discovery in 1859, that humans are not god-like
creatures, unique among all species and are instead the outcome of a very long
natural biological evolution;
— James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery in 1953, of the structure
of the double helix DNA molecule in each of the 46 chromosomes in human cells,
and the devastating knowledge that humans share 96 to 99 percent of the same
genes with chimpanzees.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
42.
“Islam, as a
religion, remains profoundly anchored in the traditions of a seventh century
tribal society. It denies the right to freedom of conscience and of religion,
refuses the principle of religious tolerance, and tramples the principle of the
equality of the sexes, while rejecting the democratic principle of the
separation of Church and State.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
43.
“Islamic countries need not search
very far to discover the causes of their relative economic backwardness; they
need only to look at their official religion and its devastating effects on
work, education, research, saving, and investment, and this, in some instances,
despite their enormous oil wealth.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
44.
“No organized religion treats
women, in practice, with less respect and consideration than radical Islam.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
45.
“The two biggest
curses of humanity are proselytizing religions and wars, and both have often
been intertwined.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
46.
“The amalgam of belligerent religiosity and simplistic
politics creates a threat that many have a problem understanding.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
47.
“Some religious systems establish vengeance as a modus operandi. And,
since one side is always one revenge behind, it is a recipe for perpetual
conflicts and perpetual wars.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
48.
« There are none more ferocious than those who kill with
religious zeal. »
Rodrigue
Tremblay
49.
“Wars and military murders are the last refuge of the
religious scoundrel.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
50.
“Warmongers in government know
that people do not like wars, especially illegal wars of aggression, against
countries which have not attacked them, and that is why their first reflex is
to attempt to drag the people along with lies and false pretexts for war, and
by dehumanizing any potential enemy through simplistic propaganda.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
51.
“It is a sad fact that even in
so-called democracies, it seems that all wars are based on and sold with
official lies and fraudulent fabrications in order to fool the people.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
52.
“To build a compact strong enough to steer a
democratic country on the path of a permanent war economy takes an alliance of
interests between militarists, industrialists, politicians, sycophants and
propagandists.
— These are the five pillars of the military-industrial complex, as it
can be found today in the United States.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
53.
“Armed with the neoconservative doctrine of so-called ‘preventive’ wars
of aggression, if it is not vigilant, the United States could be in the 21st
Century, what Germany was in the 20th Century, that is, a danger to the World.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
54.
“From
1988 on, there has been a quiet political coup in the United States, with far
right money interests taking over the American system of government, and this not
only includes the U.S. Congress; it includes also the White House and the U.S.
Supreme Court. Billionaire oligarchs have taken control in the United States
and they pretty much do what they want with the government, irrespective of
what the people think or wish.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
55.
“When American President Harry S. Truman decided, on his own,
to drop the atom bomb, a barbarous weapon of mass destruction, on the Japanese
civilian populations of the cities of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki, on August 6
and on August 9, 1945, the United States sided officially on the wrong side of
history.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
(In ‘The
Moral Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’, Thursday, August 12, 2010)
56.
Rodrigue Tremblay
57.
“Ever since World War II, the U.S.
has slowly become a rogue state, under the direction of more and more corrupt
and dishonest politicians.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
58.
“Nowadays, one
of the reasons why the U.S. government gives Israel, annually, large amounts of
money and armaments is because, in the eyes of the Pentagon, Israel is a large
American military base in the Middle East.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
59.
“The same simplistic
populism, the same anti-intellectualism, the same aggressive isolationism, the
same xenophobia, the same militarism, and the same scorn of international laws
and institutions can be found in some segments of American politics today.
Therefore, the United States could be in greater danger than many think.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
60.
“In being the first country to use nuclear weapons against civilian
populations, in bombing the
Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, the United States has
created a
precedent, which—besides being a giant moral retreat—is a major step of
humanity towards self-destruction.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
61.
“We can really
question whether war still has its place in a civilized world, considering the
atrocious suffering it imposes on civilian populations and the increasingly
destructive nature of modern armaments. Indeed, the more we reflect upon it,
the more we come to the conclusion that war is unworthy of a civilized world
and should be made unlawful. In the twentieth century, wars were unacceptable;
in the 21st century, they have become a scandal for humanity.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
62.
“There exists
currently in the United States an unhealthy obsession with high caliber guns—a
form of idolatry of the gun as a useful tool to settle differences between
individuals.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
63.
“The unrestricted use of big money in
politics can turn a vibrant democracy into a decadent plutocracy, just as
surely as poisoning a well can destroy a village.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
64.
“Each time a
government circulates photos of dead babies to justify an act of military
aggression against a foreign country, one has to ask if this is not part of a
campaign of artful disinformation to manipulate public opinion, and if it is a case
of a ‘false flag’ operation.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
65.
“For a people to be free, it must first prove that it deserves to be so.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
66.
“An organized
and coherent minority is usually stronger politically than a disorganized and
divided majority.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
67.
“Mankind
invented the imaginary world of ‘gods’ to console people of their absence of
control over life and death.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
68.
“Gods
live in the heads of people, and nowhere else—gods exist because people believe
in them.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
69.
“The claim or
pretension of a ‘supernatural’ world inhabited by supernatural entities such as
gods, demons, ghosts... etc., is a harmless illusion at best, or its worst, a
scam and a cruel hoax perpetrated on the most susceptible and gullible humans.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
70.
“The
choice of a god is actually the choice of a philosophy and of a vision of the
world.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
71.
“Some doctors exist primarily to take
advantage of people’s illness, just as some religious sorcerers are here to
take advantage of people’s distress in the face of death.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
72.
“On the
political chessboard, those in the middle may have influence, but they rarely
have power.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
73.
“It takes several months for carpenters to build a
house; but it only takes a few hours for demolishers to tear it down. —The same
is true of reputations.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
74.
“Cemeteries
are full of people with large pension funds.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
75.
“In our
media-run world, people often get the politicians that pundits and the media
deserve.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
76.
“It is only when
the media are free and honest, and independent from the government, that people
can hope to be truly informed and free from government manipulation.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
77.
“A government
bent on controlling the people can never gather enough information on its citizens,
and it can be expected to use all the
available techniques to obtain it.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
78.
“Hell on Earth
is when one has too few things... or too many.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
79.
“It would be
nothing less than scandalous for the United States of America, which was
founded on humanistic and democratic principles, to attempt to replace the old
empires of the past and to deny the fundamental democratic right of other peoples
and other nations to self-determination.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
Rodrigue
Tremblay
81.
“The
Earth can endure without humans, but humans cannot survive without planet
Earth.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
82.
“For the
environment to be saved for future generations, we must make a virtue of
self-restraint.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
83.
84.
Rodrigue
Tremblay
85.
“When you don’t think straight, you don’t
act straight.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
86.
“Wars of
aggression are the most barbarous of all human endeavors and are, more often
than not, the instruments of insane tyrants who hear voices.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
87.
“Wars of aggression are for warlike, gambling
leaders, a way to bet their citizens’ houses to fulfill their own megalomaniac
dreams of grandeur.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
88.
“Wars are cruel gimmicks designed to enrich the few
and impoverish the many.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
89.
“Humanity should be a community of brothers
and sisters, and for them to wage wars against each other is the summum of
immorality and stupidity.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
90.
“The
world should be worried about those who go around the Planet with a can of
gasoline in one hand and a box of matches in the other, pretending to sell fire
insurance.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
91.
“The American military invasion of Iraq, in 2003, to gain control over that country’s vast
oil reserves could go down in history as the biggest planned heist of the 21st
Century.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
92.
“Death is part of life. It is an
unavoidable surrender to the overwhelming forces of nature.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
93.
“Historically
speaking, organized religions have often produced more demagogues and
charlatans than politics.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
95.
“Crooked
politicians, when facing a quagmire of their own making, and feeling powerless and under attack, will spend unlimited
amounts of public money and sacrifice unlimited numbers of other people’s
lives, in order to save face.”
96.
“Social justice and a fair economic system are prerequisites of a well
functioning democracy.”
97.
“One of the greatest benefits of a well functioning democracy is its
capacity to bring about continuous change: change of government, change of
policies, change in the distribution of income and wealth... etc., and to avoid
the morass of stagnation and the status quo.”
98.
“As the rich often steal from the poor, it is only natural and just for
the state to tax the rich to give to the poor.”
99.
“With the current
globalization of our problems, we need to extend our circle of empathy and view
humanity as a worldwide extended human family. As long as we refrain from
facing that challenge, divisiveness and unsolvable conflicts will persist.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
100.
“The Super Golden Rule of humanist morality: ‘Not only do to others, as you would have them do to you, but
also, ‘Do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their
place.’ — The corollary also follows: ‘Don’t do to others what you would not
like to be done to you, if you were in their place’.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
101.
“There is both a selfish and an altruistic motive to be
moral.
The reciprocity principle,
according to which one must treat others as one expects to be treated by them,
establishes a fundamentally logical and enlightened selfish reason for being
moral.
The empathy principle, which
enables us to imagine being in someone else’s place and seeing things from his
or her point of view, establishes a non-selfish reason to be moral.
Together, they form the humanist
Super Golden Rule in the code for global ethics.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
102.
“There are three interrelated moral imperatives that have always been
sound moral values, but which will become increasingly required for humanity to
go forward and survive:
– more human empathy – more interpersonal tolerance – and more
interpersonal sharing, as a foundation for a more harmonious, for a freer and
for a more prosperous world.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
103.
“We must aim at creating the greatest good for the greatest number of
people, not the maximizing of purely selfish personal financial objectives.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
104.
“Life is
a succession of seasons: after a breeding and training period, comes spring, 20
to 40 years, the period of takeoff; then, it's summer, from 40 to 60 years old,
when one reaches the top of his or her job or career; then comes autumn, from
60 to 80 years, when one harvests what he or she has sowed; winter, 80 to 100
years, is a time of survival and of wisdom.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
105.
“If we want to survive collectively, and not repeat the
disastrous experience of the dinosaurs who became extinct some 65 million years
ago, after roaming the Earth for close to 200 million years, we will have to
adopt a better code of ethics.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
106.
“We should adopt the simple but somewhat
revolutionary idea that we are living on the same small planet and that we
should attempt to survive on this planet as members of the same human race.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
107.
“Our fame
in the minds of people is ephemeral. When their memory weakens, they quickly
end up forgetting our name.”
Rodrigue Tremblay
108.
“When all has been said and done, before
the beginning we are nothing—and in the end we are nothing. It is what we do in
between that counts.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
109.
“What is the
benefit of man if he gains the whole world, but loses his life, i.e. if, in
addition to corrupting him, that undermines his health and causes him to die
prematurely!”
Rodrigue
Tremblay
110.
“What nature wants from us is that
we all end up like dead leaves.”
Rodrigue
Tremblay