Conspiracy

Conspiracy is a term used to refer to a broad range of social alliances, and is most often used with a connotation of secretive and sinister purposes. Cabals are said to exist where a number of people greater than two are involved in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in a church, state, or other community, often by intrigue. In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power. A civil conspiracy or collusion is an agreement between two or more parties to deprive a third party of legal rights or deceive a third party to obtain an illegal objective. It is not necessary that the conspirators be involved in all stages of planning or be aware of all details. In criminal law, a  criminal conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement.

B

 * In periods of economic upheaval, in periods of economic crisis, wealth is not destroyed, it is merely transferred.
 * Larry Bates, in The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (1998)


 * Illuminism is becoming a great and formidable power, and I fear, in my conscience, that kings and peoples will have much to suffer from it unless foresight and prudence break its frightful mechanism.
 * Francois Charles de Berckheim, in a secret police report (1810 October), as quoted in The Controversy of Zion (1978) by Douglas Reed


 * These are the methods by which the Illuminés, without any apparent organization, without settled leaders, agree together from the banks of the Rhine to those of the Neva, from the Baltic to the Dardanelles, and advance continually towards the same goal, without leaving any trace that might compromise the interests of the association or even bring suspicion on any of its members; the most active police would fail before such a combination.
 * Francois Charles de Berckheim, in a secret police report to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1814), as quoted in The Return of the Puritans (1983) by Pat Brooks, p. 76


 * Freemasons, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucius, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids — always by a Freemason.
 * Ambrose Bierce, in The Cynic's Word Book (1906) [later retitled The Devil's Dictionary]


 * In every country unscrupulous wealth can, by artificially "making opinion," mislead and beguile the people more easily and with less chance of detection than in any other way. Democracy has no more persistent or insidious foe than the money power, to which it may say, as Dante said when he reached in his journey through hell the dwelling of the God of Riches, "Here we found Wealth, the great enemy."
 * James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, Modern Democracies (1921), Vol. 2., p. 486


 * Out of these troubled times, our objective—a new world order—can emerge. Today, that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we have known.
 * George H. W. Bush, in a speech to a joint session of Congress (1990 Sep 11)

C

 * Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. ... Addresses are requested ... to employ propaganda assets to ... refute the attacks of the critics. ... Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories.
 * Central Intelligence Agency, CIA Document 1035-960 "Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report"


 * If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.
 * G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908), pp. 32-33


 * From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
 * Winston Churchill, "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald [London], (8 February 1920), pg. 5. Note that Churchill wrote this before the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were thoroughly discredited.

D

 * The truth is, the Jesuits of Rome have perfected Freemasonry to be their most magnificent and effective tool, accomplishing their purposes among Protestants.
 * John Daniel, in The Grand Design Exposed (1999), p. 302


 * The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
 * Benjamin Disraeli, in his novel Coningsby, or the New Generation (1844), Chapter XV


 * There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House … I mean the secret societies.... It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe — the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries — is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated institutions … they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical establishments. Some of them may go further...
 * Benjamin Disraeli, in a speech in the House of Commons (14 July 1856)


 * I think that's just in human nature to be drawn to conspiracies. People want answers. Sometimes things happen without a reason; sometimes chaos happens — that's not satisfying to people. People want a villain. They want a reason; they want a cabal; they want a conspiracy.
 * David Duchovny, "Mulder And Scully On Why The World Is Ready For An 'X-Files' Reboot", NPR, (January 23, 2016).

E

 * Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 51

F

 * The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.
 * Henry Ford, My Life and Work, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922, p. 179


 * The real rulers of a nation are undiscoverable.
 * US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, when asked at a cocktail party who really runs the United States, according to "Globalists Run U.S., Says Sen. Malone", Chicago Daily Tribune, April 25, 1949, p. 1.
 * Unsourced variant: The real rulers of Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.

G

 * People find conspiracy theories fantastically comforting not because they’re more frightening than reality, but because they’re less frightening than reality.
 * William Gibson, "Can The X-Files exist in a post-9/11 world?", Andrew Harrison, New Statesmen, (29 December 2015).


 * The tale of 9/11 will just not go away, largely because it is clear to anyone who reads the lengthy 9/11 Commission Report that many issues that should have been subject to inquiry were ignored for what would appear to be political reasons. The George W. Bush Administration quite obviously did not want to assume any blame for what had happened and that bias also extended to providing cover for U.S.“allies,” most particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel. Those whohave sought the truth about 9/11 have been persistent in their attempts to find out information that was suppressed but they have been blocked repeatedly in spite of numerous FOIA requests.Now,eighteen years after the event, there has been something like a breakthrough, penetrating the wall of silence erected by the government. FBI reports on the possible Israeli role in 9/11 were released on May 7th and they serve to support speculation by myself and other former intelligence officers that Israel, at a minimum, had detailed prior knowledge of what was to take place. More than that, Israeli intelligence officers working in the United States might well have enabled certain aspects of the conspiracy.
 * Philip Giraldi in Israel’s Role In 9/11, Council for the National Interest (28 May 2019)


 * There are monsters among us. Every day I read about an American “plan” to either invade some place new or to otherwise inflict pain to convince a “non-compliant” foreign government how to behave. Last week it was Iran but next week it could just as easily again be Lebanon, Syria or Venezuela. Or even Russia or China, both of whom are seen as “threats” even though American soldiers, sailors and marines sit on their borders and not vice versa...  Just as often, one learns about a new atrocity by Israelis inflicted on the defenseless Arabs just because they have the power to do so.
 * Philip Giraldi in Monsters Walk the Earth. Why These Three Countries Are the Real Troika of Evil, The Council for the American Interest (27 Jun 2019)


 * What is the best way to debunk a conspiracy theory? Call it a conspiracy theory, a label which in and of itself implies disbelief. The only problem with that is there have been many actual conspiracies both historically and currently and many of them are not in the least theoretical in nature. Conspiracies of several kinds brought about American participation in both world wars.... Given the multiple crises currently being experienced in the United States it is perhaps inevitable that speculation about conspiracies is at its highest level ever. To the average American it is incomprehensible how the country has become so screwed up because the political and economic elite is fundamentally incompetent, so the search for a scapegoat must go on...
 * Philip Giraldi, in Some Conspiracy Theories Are for Real, Strategic Culture (July 2, 2020)


 * Further world progress is now possible only through the search for a consensus of all mankind, in movement toward a new world order.
 * Mikhail Gorbachev, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly (7 December 1988)

H

 * Most Americans will be shocked to learn that the conspiracy-theory label was popularized as a pejorative term by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a propaganda program initiated in 1967. This program was directed at criticisms of the Warren Commission's report. The propaganda campaign called on media corporations and journalists to criticize "conspiracy theorists" and raise questions about their motives and judgments.
 * Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press: 2014), p. 21


 * Conspiracy Theory in America is about the transformation of America's civic culture from the Founders' hard-nosed realism about elite political intrigue to today's blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition. This cultural reversal did not occur spontaneously; it was planned and orchestrated by the government itself.
 * Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press: 2014), p. 21


 * The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.
 * J. Edgar Hoover, as quoted in The Elks Magazine (August 1956).

J

 * I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing... it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.
 * Andrew Jackson, letter to L. H. Coleman of Warrenton, North Carolina (29 April 1824)

K

 * For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
 * John F. Kennedy, "The President and the Press", address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association (27 April 1961)] (Audio). In his speech President Kennedy addresses his discontent with the press's news coverage before, during, and after the Bay of Pigs incident, suggesting that there is a need for "far greater public information" and "far greater official secrecy" in light of the international "communist threat" during the Cold War.


 * If there were a distinguished person whose life, by birth and conditions, belonged especially to the same earthly dissimilarity, a distinguished person who would not assent to this divisive conspiracy against the universally human, that is, against the neighbor, if he did not have the heart to do this, if, clearly perceiving the consequences, he still trusted in God for the strength to bear these consequences while he lacked the strength to harden his heart ... the distinguished corruption would accuse him of being a traitor and self-lover&mdash;because he wanted to love the neighbor.
 * Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847), as translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (1995), p. 76

L

 * 1. Conspiracy to turn the world into a giant marketplace for the benefit of the wealthy elite... 2. Conspiracy by transnational corporations to turn billions of people into addicts... 3. Conspiracy to plunder the Global South for the benefit of the Global North... 4. Conspiracy to hide the effects of climate breakdown for corporate profit... 5. Conspiracy to grow the global economy indefinitely, while killing most of life on Earth and risking the collapse of civilization....
 * Jeremy Lent in The Five Real Conspiracies You Need to Know About, Opendemocracy (1 October 2020)


 * So who, in this case, are the conspirators? If you’re living a normal life in an affluent country, you don’t need to look further than the mirror.... So, the next time someone tells you to “do your research” on their new conspiracy theory, please point them to the real conspiracies that are threatening life on this beautiful but troubled planet. The good news is that, since they’re real conspiracies, there is something we can do about them. We can vote in politicians that promise to peel back the neoliberal nightmare; advocate for curbs on predatory corporate activities; support the Global South in changing the terms of international trade; declare a Climate Emergency in our community to turn around carbon emissions; and become active in the movement to transform our global society to an Ecological Civilization—one that is based on life-affirming principles rather than accumulating wealth.
 * Jeremy Lent in The Five Real Conspiracies You Need to Know About, Opendemocracy (1 October 2020)

M

 * The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.
 * Congressman Larry MacDonald, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that was shot down by the Soviets. Introduction to The Rockefeller File (1976) by Gary Allen


 * The counterconspiracy theory of history … maintained that many otherwise incomprehensible historical events could be explained by identifying the conspiracy theories held by the protagonists … a surprising number of cases where prominent political, military and law-enforcement figures had been (openly or secretly) conspiracy theorists.
 * Ken MacLeod, The Star Fraction (1995), p. 93 in the first U. S. edition (Tor, 2001)


 * The revolutionary movement which began in 1789 in the Cercle Social, which in the middle of its course had as its chief representatives Leclerc and Roux, and which finally with Babeuf's conspiracy was temporarily defeated, gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf's friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830. This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order.
 * Karl Marx, in The Holy Family (1845)


 * A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
 * Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, in The Communist Manifesto (1848)


 * Excerpts from Rep. Louis T. McFadden's speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, June 10, 1932:"Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. ... Some people think the Federal reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers, foreign and domestic speculator sand swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. ... Those 12 private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this country by bankers who came here from Europe and who repaid us for our hospitality by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out of this country to finance Japan in a war against Russia.They created a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along. They instigated the separate peace between Germany and Russia and thus drove a wedge between the Allies in the World War. ...  Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power but the truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States. ...  Mr. Chairman, when the Federal reserve act was passed the people of the United States did not perceive that a world system was being set up here which would make the savings of an American school-teacher available to a narcotic-drug vendor in Macao. They did not perceive that the United States was to be lowered to the position of a coolie country which has nothing but raw materials and heavy goods for export. That Russia was destined to supply man power and that this country was to supply financial power to an international superstate--a superstate controlled by International bankers and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure."
 * Congressional Record, 72nd Congress, 1st session, June 10, 1932; Vol. 72, pp. 12595-12603. McFadden served as Chairman of the United States House Committee on Banking and Currency 1920 to 1931.


 * Abraham Lincoln was assassinated through the machinations of a group representative of the international bankers, who feared the United States President's national credit ambitions.
 * Gerald Grattan McGeer, in Vancouver Sun (2 May 1934)


 * Yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists and ham-fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the CIA, you really have nothing to worry about. If however, you have a name similar to somebody on a list targeted by the CIA, then you are dead.
 * Alan Moore, in "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" (2003)


 * The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.
 * Alan Moore, in "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" (2003)

O

 * How can law be just? — impossible. It is against the people who have nothing, it is for the people who have everything. It is always in favor of the haves - it is made by the haves, it is a conspiracy of the haves against the have-nots. In all societies it has been so, the law is always unjust. Your so-called justice is just a pretension. The world where ownership exists cannot be a just world.
 * Osho, Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol. 2, Ch. 7


 * The present Federal Reserve System is a flagrant case of the Government's conferring a special privilege upon bankers. The Government hands to the banks its credit, at virtually no cost to the banks, to be loaned out by the bankers for their own private profit. Still worse, however, is the fact that it gives the bankers practically complete control of the amount of money that shall be in circulation. Not one dollar of these Federal Reserve notes gets into circulation without being borrowed into circulation and without someone paying interest to some bank to keep it circulating. Our present money system is a debt money system. Before a dollar can circulate, a debt must be created. Such a system assumes that you can borrow yourself out of debt.
 * Willis A. Overholser, A short review and analysis of the history of money in the United States, with an introduction to the current money problem (1936), p. 56

Q

 * It must not be felt that these heads of the world's chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather, they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investments bankers (also called 'international' or 'merchant' bankers) who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks.
 * Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), pp. 326-327

R

 * For more than a century, ideological extremists, at either end of the political spectrum, have seized upon well-publicized incidents, such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal, working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists,' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will.  If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.[written in response to accusations similar to the one above by Lawrence Patton McDonald]
 * David Rockefeller, in Memoirs (2002)


 * The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.
 * Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Col. Edward Mandell House (21 November 1933)


 * Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the ﬁrst task of statesmanship.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, "Declaration of the Principles of the Progressive Party" (1912), in Theodore Roosevelt, an Autobiography, p. 578

S

 * Assassinations, cover-ups, political blackmail, public relations image-making, are all examples of para-politics; they all represent deviations from the model of constitutional government in which public affairs are handled by public debate and rational analysis. The cumulative effect of this government by hidden process can be to demoralize the average citizen, who may simply accept that the world, and even the universe, will be dominated by occult and capricious powers. [...] For to us who are spectators, the events of Dallas and of Watergate have appeared like meteors in a night sky, suddenly and without warning. Not even the events themselves have been always discernible, only the trail they leave behind in our sometimes cloudy media. It is not easy from the ground to pick out the true shape of a meteor. Nevertheless, as they become more frequent, one can begin to discern in what quadrant of the sky they find their origin. [...] [W]e should not be terrified by meteors, even if the night sky reminds us of our frailty and ignorance. For to scientists meteors are no longer symbols of mystery or portents of disaster: they are needed clues to the nature of the physical universe. And as Socrates remarked so long ago, if we can find reason behind the phenomena of the skies, we should look for no less in the affairs of men.
 * . Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection (1977), pp. 48-49


 * People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
 * Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776)


 * There is no such thing, at this stage of the world's history in America, as an independent press... We are the tools and the vassals of the rich behind the scenes. We are marionettes. These men pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our capacities are all the property of these men - we are intellectual prostitutes.
 * John Swinton, c. 1883. Attributed to "a prominent New York journalist" in E. J. Schellhouse, The New Republic. Founded on the Natural and Inalienable Rights of Man (1883), pp. 122-123. Later sources attribute this specifically to Swinton. American Notes & Queries (Jan 1943, p. 159) says "It is more than likely that John Swinton's statement ... was made at the 'Journalists' Gathering' in the rooms of the Twilight Club in the Mills Building, New York City, on April 12, 1883. The subject of Swinton's talk was 'Some Things an Editor Dare Not Discuss.'"

T

 * The State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens.
 * Leo Tolstoy, Letter to Vasily Botkin, in A. N. Wilson, Tolstoy (2001), p. 146


 * In the eighteenth century, freemasonry became expressive of a militant policy of enlightenment, as in the case of the Illuminati, who were the forerunners of revolution; on its left, it culminated in the Carbonari.
 * Leon Trotsky, in My Life, Chapter 8 : My First Prisons

W

 * It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.  The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation).  That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.
 * George Washington, in a letter to George Washington Snyder (1798 Oct 24)


 * Do you realize sufficiently what it means to rule—to rule in a secret society? Not only over the lesser or more important of the populace, but over the best of men, over men of all ranks, nations, and religions, to rule without external force, to unite them indissolubly, to breathe one spirit and soul into them, men distributed over all parts of the world?
 * Adam Weishaupt, "Greeting to the newly integrated illuminatos dirigentes", in Nachtrag von weitern Originalschriften vol. 2 (1787) p. 45


 * You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.
 * Robert Anton Wilson, in Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups (1998), Introduction, p. 16


 * Although Masonry is often denounced as either a political or religious "conspiracy", Freemasons are forbidden to discuss either politics or religion within the lodge. Gary Dryfoos of the Massachusetts Institute of technology, who maintains the best Masonic site on the web, always stresses these points and also offers personal testimony that after many years as a Mason, including high ranks, he has not yet been asked to engage in pagan or Satanic rituals or plot for any reason for or against any political party. The more rabid anti-Masons, of course, dismiss such testimony as flat lies. The enemies of Masonry, who are usually Roman Catholics or Fundamentalist Protestants, insist that the rites of the order contain "pagan" elements, e.g., the Yule festival, the Spring Solstice festival, the dead-and-resurrected martyr (Jesus, allegedly historical, to Christians; Hiram, admittedly allegorical, to Masons). All these and many other elements in Christianity and Masonry have a long prehistory in paganism, as documented in the 12 volumes of Sir James George Frazer's Golden Bough. The major offense of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like our First Amendment, encourages equal tolerance for all religions, and this tends, somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one religion. Those who insist you must accept their dogma fervently and renounce all others as devilish errors, correctly see this Masonic tendency as inimitable [sic] — to their faith.
 * Robert Anton Wilson, in Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups (1998),Freemasonry, p. 187; in the final sentence here, inimitable perhaps should be "inimicable".


 * Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
 * Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913), Doubleday, pp. 13-14

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 132.


 * Conspiracies no sooner should be formed Than executed.
 * Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act I, scene 2


 * O conspiracy, Sham'st thou to show thy dang'rous brow by night, When evils are most free?
 * William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act II, scene 1, line 76


 * Take no care Who chafes, who frets; and where conspirers are: Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be.
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act IV, scene 1, line 89


 * Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago, If thou but think'st him wrong'd and mak'st his ear A stranger to thy thoughts.
 * William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 3, line 142


 * Open-eye conspiracy His time doth take.
 * William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act II, scene 1. Song, line 301.