The Asylum’s Best Quotes of 2025

I collect and use a lot of quotes by others on The Asylum. From the beginning one of the things that I wanted to do on The Asylum was, for the most part, only use quotes that I collected from my own reading of books, essays and other sources. If I need or want a quote for an essay or post I don’t hop on Google or Grok and ask for a good quote about whatever, I search my own quotes that I’ve collected or look through books that I’ve read (I am habitual underliner). I have a long, digital document of quotes I have collected from my own reading over the years and I also collect quotes on thecorporateasylum.com where they are searchable and browsable.

My hope was and is that this method gives The Asylum an original, unique feel to it. There are some standalone quotes I’ve seen that are hard to pass up (I’m thinking of some of Orwell’s at the moment) and I will use these on occasion, but 98% of the time I follow the above method, because I know the quotes I save or underline in a book or essay are not going to be what others would save or find interesting.

Some of these quotes only appear on thecorporateasylum.com and not on Substack. The first one below (and in the image above) is one I just found that I had forgotten about while looking for an appropriate epigraph for this post. I think it applies to most of us who write here on Substack. It’s a great quote.

So here are my favorite quotes used on The Asylum (on the website and on Substack) during 2025 in no particular order.

It is unlikely that many of us will be famous, or even remembered.  But not less important than the brilliant few that lead a nation or a literature to fresh achievements, are the unknown many whose patient efforts keep the world from running backward; who guard and maintain the ancient values, even if they do not conquer new; whose inconspicuous triumph it is to pass on what they inherited from their fathers, unimpaired and undiminished, to their sons.  Enough, for almost all of us, if we can hand on the torch, and not let it down; content to win the affection, if it may be, of a few who know us, and to be forgotten when they in their turn have vanished.  The destiny of mankind is not governed wholly by its “stars.”²— F.L. Lucas

It’s a question of the price. Just the price. Undoubtedly we could learn much more, but the cost of obtaining that knowledge…it might be too great. For both sides. — Stanislaw Lem, Eden

This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force.³— C. J. Hopkins

The staggering toll of “vaccination” is effectively invisible, with millions killed, not by thousands all at once, but one by one, and (mostly) weeks, or months, or years after the lethal shot, their “sudden death” or “rare” fatal illness seeming wholly unconnected to the jab(s) that caused it.⁴— Mark Crispin Miller

The reality is there was no “deadly insurrection”—just a cynically exploited riot. Nor was there a “Plan”—just a lot of cynically exploited patriots mourning the loss of their country.⁵— Joe Allen

…I advocate…a system that produces the free men who will actually be of use. Culture is indeed the way, real culture, authentic modes of being that transcend habits of employability. Be the nerd, the jock, the prom queen, and the crusader all at once, so far as you are able. Human capital and human beings are not the same thing.⁶— Librarian of Celaeno

In everything that we do, we must keep the long term in mind, acting as if the consequences of our actions are ever-lasting: such a perspective naturally draws us upwards, towards beauty.⁷— Iliade Institute

The tool to build such a society was psychological alienation, said Harris. To alienate children from themselves so they could no longer turn inward for strength, to alienate them from families, traditions, religions, cultures—so no outside source of advice could contradict the will of the political state.⁸— John Taylor Gatto

. . . I am inclined to think that the final judgment of any particular type of culture is what type of men and women it turns out.⁹— Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

The conspirators don’t do the wrong thing by mistake – they do the wrong thing on purpose.¹⁰ — Vernon Coleman

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.¹¹—Frederick Douglass

Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestions of advertising and propaganda.¹² — Thomas Merton

Progressivists are not inconsistent; they are simply evil, and it is this evil that must be fought against. Indeed, progressivism is not synonymous with generous action—it is, instead, a destructive, totalitarian, and violent ideology that must be denounced.¹³ — Jean-Yves Le Gallou

I do not have all the answers, nor do I pretend to, but I know this much – given the amount of lies we have been force fed there isn’t a single question that should be off the table at this point.¹⁴— Feargus O’Connor Greenwood

If nothing else, this assassination [Charlie Kirk’s] ought to put to rest the fantasy that all we need to do is sit down and have a jolly fine debate with the Left and they’ll see reason and come around. That is not going to happen at all because progressivism is not about “fairness” or “debate” or “reasonableness” or whatnot, it’s about power.¹⁵ — Theophilus Chilton

Today, the despair of a debt fuelled dependence on addictions – shopping, fornicating, drugs and so on – is compelling people to ask whether there is another world, a better world, and to say to themselves there must be.¹⁶— Frank Wright

Macron, Merz, Starmer. . . these are the Three Stooges of our time, and Europe’s collapse has degenerated to morbid, masochistic slapstick as their factories shutter and the Jihadis go about raping their wives and daughters.¹⁷— James Howard Kunstler

How few are shaken in their opinions, or have the grace to confess it!¹⁸ — William Hazlitt

Anybody who speaks directly and honestly about the detriments of mass migration will sooner or later attract the racism police. In the eyes of these discourse minders, it is illicit to notice that all human populations do not behave in the same ways, that not all human populations should be intermingled with each other and that diversity is not a strength and often in fact a great problem.¹⁹— eugyppius

The bottom line is that it is not racist or even ethnocentric, to object passionately to the “invasion” of the United States, or any Western country (or any country), by illegal immigrants. When you import people in large groups, you also import their cultures. We need to face the fact that the freedom, rule of law, relative peaceableness, and high level of civil society functioning, of Western nations, is an incredible achievement and an incredible gift. When you import millions of people who are not acculturated to these norms and rules, you also will import the reflexes and expectations of those who live in failed states, or under corrupt rulers, tyrannical or unequal laws, and oppressive theocracies. You simply cannot sustain the high level of functioning civil society, the peaceableness, rule of law, legal equality, etc, that characterize the West, under these conditions. And we need to stop being shy about saying so aloud.²⁰— Naomi Wolf

Trump and his stellar cabinet are fighting this kind of fight. To all the doom-and-gloomers complaining endlessly about who isn’t doing this or that RIGHT NOW, you have to understand the context and the war and the necessity of dismantling the opposition brick by brick, rat by rat.²¹— NewZealandDoc

but the flood of the unvetted and unsuited has been endemic and deliberate. these groups cannot assimilate and would not wish to if they could. this is especially true of islam, a religion and culture neither suited nor inclined to coexistence among the west. i routinely ask: name three countries in the last 200 years where a large influx of islam has made the country better. i get crickets then howls of “islamaphobia!” from the very people islam is itching to destroy (women, homosexuals, progressives, etc).²²— el gato malo

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Notes

1. Watson, George, The Discipline of English: A Guide to Critical Theory and Practice, The Macmillan Press LTD, London, 1978, p. 109.
2. Lucas, F.L., Style, Collier Books, New York, N. Y., 1962, p. 35.
3. Hopkins, C. J., The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021). Kindle Edition. p. 178.
4. Miller, Mark Crispin, "Don't "vaccination," and the Blitzkrieg that incinerated all Pacific Palisades, PROVE that we are in the hands of psychopaths? You better believe it.", News from Underground by Mark Crispin Miller, January 15, 2025, Source
5. Allen, Joe, "A Sullen Anniversary", Singularity Weekly, January 6, 2024, Source
6. Librarian of Celaeno, "Vivek Ramaswamy is Right: But Not in the Way He Thinks," December 26, 2024, Source
7. Iliade, Institut. Guardians of Heritage: The Iliade Institute’s Call to Action. Arktos Media Ltd., 2024. Kindle edition. p. 45.
8. Gatto, John Taylor, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC Canada, fourteenth printing, 2024, p. 13.
9. Yutang, Lin, The Importance of Living, Quill, William Morrow, New York, 1998(first published in 1937), pg. 87.
10. Coleman, Vernon. The End of Medicine: Death by Doctor: Why and how doctors are now paid to kill their patients, Kindle Edition, p. 15.
11. Frederick Douglass quoted in Plummer, Joseph. Tragedy and Hope 101: The Illusion of Justice, Freedom, and Democracy. Kindle Edition. p. 100.
12. Merton, Thomas, No Man Is An Island, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, San Diego, New York, London, 1983, pp. 108-109.
13. Le Gallou, Jean-Yves, The Propaganda Society: Resistance Manual for the Mental Gulag, ARKTOS, London, 2025. p. 56.
14. Greenword, Feargus O'Conner, 180°: Unlearn the Lies You've Been Taught to Believe, Ta-Dah! an imprint of Tinderbox, first published in Great Britain, 2021, p. 736.
15. Chilton, Theophilus, "Crossing a Line," The Neo-Ciceronian Times, September 11, 2025, Source
16. Wright, Frank, "The Next 'State Religion'," September 26, 2025, Source
17. Kunstler, James Howard, "Slouching Towards Peace," October 20, 2025, Source
18. Hazlitt, William, Literary Remains, Editor, Professor Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, New York 1983. Reprint of the 1836 edition by Saunders and Otley. Quote is from the essay "Belief, Whether Voluntary?", p. 29.
19. eugyppius, "Why racism is a stupid and incoherent concept that you should not worry about and that Western society must sooner or later discard", February 2, 2025, Source
20. Wolf, Naomi, "President Trump's New York", March 22, 2025, Source
21. NewZealandDoc, "Trump, Warp Speed and the Jab", September 1, 2025, Source
22. el gato malo, "backing up the shark truck", November 28, 2025, Source