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Jacque Fresco

Jacque Fresco Quotes

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Famous Jacque Fresco Quotes

“At the beginning of World War II the U.S. had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was No, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war.”

“Living through the 1929 Great Depression helped shape my social conscience. During this time, I realized the earth was still the same place, manufacturing plants were still intact, and resources were still there, but people didn’t have money to buy the products. I felt the rules of the game we play by were outmoded and damaging. This began a life-long quest resulting in the conclusions and designs presented in The Venus Project.”

“Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, the Free-Market .... What good are these approaches for? These attempts are made by men who are cerebral insufficient. I'm trying to give you back your brain, which they took away from you in schools and in your upbringing. I'm trying to show you how the world works. So if you want a better world, you have to get up off your ass and make it better”

“If you want your children to relate to the culture you live in, if you want to train them outside of the general system, you have to tell your children that ordinary children tend to say things like 'I can run faster than you; I can draw better than you; I know things you don't know'. You have to tell them what normal children are like. Normal children are messed up and you have to tell them about that. But if you instruct your child in high correlation with the physical world, they won't be able to relate with normal children. Normal means mixed up as I use the word.”

“We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us.”

“We're running into a lot of new problems today because of what we emphasize in this culture. The word 'success' to the average person means earning a lot of money and having a home, two cars, children in college. Success to me is entirely different to what success is to the average person. Success is being a successful human being in terms of pursuing what you believe in. If you believe in making paintings, writing poetry, writing music. If this is what you really want, you're successful to yourself. But to be successful to your culture means to sell yourself short of what you really want”

“Self-centeredness will bring on the destruction of our world. National pride separates people. All people need the same thing. When you really get down to it, you'll find that all people need good food, clean water, clean air, and a decent environment, meaning education as to how to relate to one another and to avoid conflict, how to accept the differences where different people draw different conclusions.”

“Everything that you've learned: 'Make a lot of money, have a nice house'. But they never teach you at school how to relate, how to communicate with others, how to share values with others. ...They teach you how to make a living. You become an optometrist, he becomes a physicist, she becomes a structural engineer, he's an architect. In the future, none of that. Everybody is trained to be a generalist, so they understand different cultures, different values, how we get to be the way we are. So no-one can ever use you for war or killing anybody or hurting anybody”

“Learning to be flexible in values takes a very long time...Of course I felt a little uncomfortable during questioning the concept of God, but then reading about the history and evolution of Gods. There were many different Gods: the God of war, the God of peace, the God of love, which was more like the people that invented them. They behaved, they got angry, they made sacrifices, they created floods when they didn't like the way things are going. This didn't come through as superior intelligence.”

“The future is our responsibility, but change will not take place until the majority loose confidence in their dictator’s and elected officials’ ability to solve problems. It will likely take an economic catastrophe resulting in enormous human suffering to bring about true social change.”

“If you make people uniform, you can control them. If you teach people to read, and think, and question things, you lose control. So, the best idea is to separate people if you wish to maintain a monetary system. It's called divide and conquer. By dividing people, they're not a threat, you can control them.”

“In a society where every man works for himself, individual incentive, working for one's self. If people worked for one's self, there wouldn't be the electric light, there wouldn't be engines and powered vehicles, there wouldn't be electrification and reservoirs and water purification. These are processes that help all people. And processes that help single people is a very primitive value system carried into this century, which is really not necessary.”

“We must get away from this limited *I did this and I did that* and the self-centeredness, that dominates our society Today. It must be a privilege to serve members of society. Not that we want rewards or medals or honor for what we do, because it is just an honor to do it, if you cannot work for that, than you missed the boat. You don’t understand the teachings of the wisest men ever lived.”

“The majority of the people of the world today are unsane, not insane, unsane meaning having been exposed to methods of evaluation that have long rendered obsolete, our language in the future will change to a saner language where we have no argument in it, 'can there be such a language?' there is, when engineers talk to each other, it's not subject to interpretation, they use math, they use descriptive systems, if I interpreted what another engineer said in the way I think he meant it: you couldn't build bridges, dams, power transmission lines. The language has to have meaning”

“I asked myself, 'How are you going to change all these people, they have different values, different customs, different language, different interpretations?' So that’s the time I joined the Ku Klux Klan in Miami. The reason I joined is to see if I could change them. So I dissolved that organization in a month-and-a-half, alone. [Applause] Then I joined the White Citizen Council. The WCC hates foreigners – all foreigners. So I joined that organization; I dissolved it in one month.”

“In our society, we move people out of government. It's all operated by machines, meaning – not the people, just the products: the farming, the agriculture, the production – it's all machine-designed and programming. But it does not program or design people. People are free to live whatever lifestyle they want to. If they hurt other people, they're helped – they’re not put in prisons”

“If there's a group like Amish people, that want to live their own lifestyle – they don't want to live in our city – they want to live out in the country, with their own projects. We’ll put up the buildings for them, design the buildings for them, design the food production systems for them – if they want us to. But we don’t control them.”

“I don't believe in Gods and devils. I think it's man-made stories to try and help people understand where all this came from. They said 'Where did the world come from if there's no God', 'Where did life come from'. Just say 'I don't know'. Don't say some guy made a man and a woman. You have no business doing that, you know what I mean? And then He got mad and flooded the whole world; told Noah to build an arc. These are terrible stories.”

“Instruction in academia did not emphasize what I thought of as essential points. I was interested in the broad range of interrelated connections within the physical sciences, but formal studies isolated each branch of science.” I feel that I have advantages greater than Da Vinci’s such as access to more information, materials, and methods.”

“Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.”

“War is not the only form of violence imposed on people through inadequate social arrangements. There is also hunger, poverty and scarcity. The use of money and the creation of debt fosters economic insecurity, which perpetuates crime, lawlessness and resentment. Paper proclamations and treaties do not alter the facts of scarcity and insecurity, and nationalism tends only to propagate the separation of nations and the world's people.”

“I didn't want to teach my kid how to read, so I used to read to him at night and close the book at the most interesting part. He said, “What happened then, daddy?” I said, “If you learn to read, you can find out. I'm too tired to read. I'll read to you tomorrow.” So, he had a need to want to learn how to read. Don't teach children how to read. Don't teach them mathematics. Give them a reason to want it. In school, they're working ass-backwards.”