Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.* — Voltaire

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. — Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany

All I know is just what I read in the newspapers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.** — Will Rogers

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* From the French “Ceux qui peuvent vous faire croire des absurdités peuvent vous faire commettre des atrocités.” David Ray Griffin used the English version on page vi of his 2006 book Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, right after the table of contents.

** If Rogers were alive in the 21st century he might say, “All I know is just what I read in the newspapers and magazines, hear on the radio, and see on the TV, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.”