CONCLUDING QUOTES

Johann von Goethe — ‘The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.’

George Washington to William Russell, September 28, 1798

I have heard much of the nefarious, and dangerous plan, and doctrines of the Illuminati, but never saw the Book until you were pleased to send it to me.9 The same causes which have prevented my acknowledging the receipt of your letter have prevented my reading the Book, hitherto; namely, the multiplicity of matters which pressed upon me before, and the debilitated state in which I was left after, a severe fever had been removed. And which allows me to add little more now, than thanks for your kind wishes and favourable sentiments, except to correct an error you have run into, of my Presiding over the English lodges in this Country. The fact is, I preside over none, nor have I been in one more than once or twice, within the last thirty years. I believe notwithstanding, that none of the Lodges in this Country are contaminated with the principles ascribed to the Society of the Illuminati.

“The Illuminati had been institutionalized in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt at the German University of Ingoldstadt, as guardians of the rationalist Enlightenment. Their aim was to illuminate the world until (as he argued) ‘Princes and nations will disappear without violence from the earth, the human race will become one family and the world the abode of reasonable men.”

― Paul Johnson, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky