“This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country´s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of W. Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by few.”
“Many historians, many sociologists and psychologists have written at lenght, and with deep concern, about the price that Western man has had to pay and will go on paying for technological progress. They point out, for example, that democracy can be hardly expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized.But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralisation of power.As the machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and more expensive - and so less available to the eterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can satisfactorily solve. In a world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with Big Man, he loses his money and finally his very existence as an independent producer; the Big Man has grobbled him up. As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer people. Under a dictatorship the Big Business, made possible by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State - that is to say, by small group of party leaders and soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders.”
“A whole population of strangers inhabited and shaped that little body, lived in that mind and controlled its wishes, dictated its thoughts...The name was an abstraction, a title arbitrarily given, like "France" or "England," to a collection, never long the same, of many individuals who were born, lived, and died within him, as the inhabitants of a country appear and disappear, but keep alive in their passage the identity of the nation to which they belong.”
“It is possible to argue that the really influential book is not that which converts ten millions of casual readers, but rather that which converts the very few who, at any given moment, succeed in seizing power. Marx and Sorel have been influential in the modern world, not so much because they were best-sellers (Sorel in particular was not at all a widely read author), but because among their few readers were two men, called respectively Lenin and Mussolini.”
“„Hitler´s dictatorship“, he said, „differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical developement, a dicttorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man....Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the lowest level – men who could think and act independently. The totalirian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of communication, i tis possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has arisen the new type of uncritical recipient of orders.“ (Albert Speer)”
“Millions and Millions," he whispered to himself: and the enormity of the evil seemed to grow with every repetition of the word. All over the world, millions of men and women lying in pain; millions dying, at this very moment; millions more grieving over them, their faces distorted, like that poor old hag's,the tears running down their cheeks. Ad millions starving, millions frightened, and sick and anxious. Millions being cursed and kicked and beaten by other brutal millions. And everywhere the stink of garbage and drink and unwashed bodies, everywhere the blight of stupidity and ugliness. The horror was always there, even when one happened to be feeling well and happy --always there, just around the corner and behind almost every door.”
“Where the republican or limited monarchial tradition is weak, the best of constitutions will not prevent ambitious politicians from succumbing with glee and gusto to the temptations cannot fail to arise. Overpopulation leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power, In the absence of a constitutional tradition, the increased power will probably be exercised in a dictatorial fashion. Even if Communism had never been invented, this would be likely to happen.. But communism has been invented. Given this fact, the probability of overpopulation leading through unrest to dictatorship becomes a virtual certainity. It is a pretty safe bet that, twenty years from now, all the world´s overpopulated and underdeveloped countries will be under some form of totalitarian rule – probably by the Communist Party.”