Propaganda Quotes
More Propaganda Quotes
Just released in 1994 is Christina Hoff Sommers’s landmark study, Who Stole Feminism? , which uses ingenious detective work to unmask the shocking fraud and propaganda of establishment feminism and the servility of American media and academe to Machiavellian feminist manipulation. This bracingly precise, fact-based book should be required reading for every journalist. Sommers is a courageous academic philosopher who was one of the very first to systematically critique current feminist ideology and who took tremendous abuse for it. … Sommers has done a great service for women and for feminism, whose fundamental precepts she has clarified and strengthened.
camille paglia— p. xvi (Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf)
The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.
walter lippmann— Liberty and the News, "What Modern Liberty Means" (1920)
Again I want to emphasize that the study of propaganda must be conducted within the context of a technological society. propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world.
jacques ellul— From the Vintage paperback (1973), p.xvii
All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.
— 1942 Diary entry,14 Mar.
The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.
jacques ellul— Vintage, p.9.
...[T]ry not to be too angry or disappointed with your fellow Americans. Most of them don't care about politics as much as the majority of my readers, and the education they have received about it from the government's public school system is nothing more than a septic tank full of warmed-over self-serving statist lies and leftist propaganda.
l. neil smith— "Only Nixon,"[17] 9 November 2008
When we consider propaganda as the attempt to shape the thoughts and feelings of others, in ways conforming to the aims of the communicator, we find a vast array of different examples throughout history.
randal marlin— Chapter Two, History Of Propaganda, p. 43
The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.
bertrand russell— Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 17: Fear, p. 175.
A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.
Saul Bellow— "Cousins," from Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984), p. 263
The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.
edward berays— Quoted in L. Tye The Father of Spin (1998) p. 102
The “Conqueror of Berlin,” as he [Joseph Goebbels] has named himself, has completely conquered Germany. And not only that. Unfortunately, many, all too many Germans living abroad, also have fallen for the cunning propaganda.
friedrich kellner— October 14, 1939; Vol. 1, p. 40
The US has always taken velvet revolution into consideration by promoting Western culture in the society and by causing strife between people and the government through propaganda, organizing certain individuals, psychological warfare and making intentional use of media, intellectual circles, university student's establishments and feminism movements in order to implement its interfering policies.
ahmad khatami— Cleric says US seeks velvet revolution, Press TV, 20 Jul 2007
Actually, we have misdefined "hypocrisy." Hypocrisy is not the failure to practice what you preach but the failure to believe it. Hypocrisy is propaganda.
peter kreeft— "The Pillars of Unbelief," National Catholic Register Jan-Feb 1988
The best goal for propaganda analysis is to develop such an understanding of the phenomenon that it will no longer be profitable for people to engage in it.
randal marlin— Chapter Eight, Propaganda, Democracy, And the Internet, p. 306
Europe resolved a great problem—the problem of the Zionist danger. The Zionists, who constituted a strong political party in Europe, caused much disorder there. Since they had a lot of property and controlled an empire of propaganda, they made the European governments helpless.
hashemi rafsanjani— Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Iranian Assembly of Experts: Hitler Wanted to Expel Jews from Europe Because They Were a Pain in the Nec. MEMRI (October 5, 2007).
— . Hitler Wanted to Expel Jews from Europe Because They Were a Pain in the Neck
The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.
jacques ellul— Vintage, p.25.
The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious it makes little or no difference.
aldous huxley— Chapter 7 (p. 63)
Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman's well-cut suit it is not noticed. For the common people of Britain, Gestapo and concentration camps have approximately the same degree of reality as the monster of Loch Ness. Atrocity propaganda is helpless against this healthy lack of imagination .
Arthur Koestler— A Challenge to 'Knights in Rusty Armor, The New York Times, (14 February 1943).
We thus have a kind of see-saw: first, pure persuasion leading to the conversion of a minority; then force exerted to secure that the rest of the community shall be exposed to the right propaganda; and finally a genuine belief on the part of the great majority, which makes the use of force again unnecessary.
bertrand russell— Ch. 9: Power over opinion.
American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.
edward r. murrow— Speaking as the Director of USIA, in testimony before a Congressional Committee (May 1963).
Thought must be judged by something that is not thought, by its effect on production or its impact on social conduct, as art today is being ultimately gauged in every detail by something that is not art, be it box-office or propaganda value.
— Max Horkheimer, describing the pragmatist view, Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 51
The US has always taken velvet revolution into consideration by promoting Western culture in the society and by causing strife between people and the government through propaganda , organizing certain individuals, psychological warfare and making intentional use of media, intellectual circles, university student's establishments and feminism movements in order to implement its interfering policies.
— Cleric says US seeks velvet revolution, Press TV, 20 Jul 2007
The attempts and propaganda of the enemies, especially those targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran, have so far proved to be futile because the Islamic Republic of Iran has extended the greatest support to the Sunni brethren in Palestine and made every effort to promote unity between Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq .
— Ali Khamenei, "Leader Receives Cultural and Executive Officials in Charge of Hajj Pilgrimage". The Office of the Supreme Leader. 14/11/2007. Retrieved on 2007-12-11.
In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. ... A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. ... A hymn is a controversial song--sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out. ...
— Pete Seeger, Show 33 - Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders. Part 1, interview recorded 2.14.1968.
The food situation in the world is serious enough, it seems to me, to justify an extension of birth control propaganda to include the practice of abortion. There must be a decreasing birth rate for some years to come and all means ought to be employed to bring it about if we are to avoid aggravation of all the evils of over population ... Let us frankly admit that birth control means just what it says and includes both prevention of conception and abortion.
— Herman Dekker, letter to the Editor (Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood), Birth Control Review (August, 1920).
In 1905 another split took place in the SDF, when part of the membership this time mainly centred in London formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a body so sectarian that it adjured both politics and trade union action, believing that socialism would come when everyone was converted. Fifty years later it was still a tiny sect, mainly concerned with echoing propaganda hostile to the Soviet Union.
— A. L. Morton and G. Tate, The British Labour Movement, 1770–1920, 1956, p. 218.
Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy’s house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded after all, the cop was protecting us.
gerry spence— Ch. 20 : The Media : The Perpetual Voice of the Master, the Abiding Ear of the Slave, p. 236
