Ken

“Christ is the only exit from this world. All other exits -sexual rapture, political utopia, economic independence - are but blind alleys in which rot the corpses of the many who have tried them.”

““[Think tanks] exert definite and even considerable influence on the process of elaborating and making political decisions. It is connected with the fact that … leaders of such centers have as a rule personal close links with the [government]. Second, the centers are created in order to prepare and adopt the major political decisions in the shade, far from public. Third, such analytical and expert centers really accumulate the best intellectual forces of the country and fourth, not always but rather often, the centers were founded simply to provide jobs to [retired] politicians.”

““Now that we know how positive reinforcement works, and why negative doesn’t, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled…nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That’s the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement—there’s no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.“”