The idea of painless, non-threatening coercion is an illusion. Fear is the inseparable companion of coercion, and its inescapable consequence. If you think it your duty to make children do what you want, whether they will or not, then it follows inexorably that you must make them afraid of what will happen to them if they don’t do what you want.
John Holt
How Children Fail, 1964
No one is more truly helpless, more completely a victim, than he who can neither choose nor change nor escape his protectors.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Albert Einstein,
in a letter to Morris Raphael Cohen,
professor emeritus of philosophy at the College of the City of New York,
defending the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a teaching position (19 March 1940).
A change has come over our democracy, it is called consumptionism. American citizens’ first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen, but that of consumer.
Samuel Strauss
‘Atlantic Monthly’, November 1924
Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Göring
Nuremberg Diary, 18 April 1946
Roy Mackay 