“Brainwashing, psychotropic drugs, lobotomy, and other more subtle form of psychosurgery; the technocratic control apparatus of the United States has at its fingertips new techniques if which fully exploited could make Orwell's 1984 seem like a benevolent utopia.”
"The Limits of Control"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
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William S. Burroughs 110
American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, a… 1914–1997Related quotes

Variant: Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation.
Source: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

Roy A. Childs, Jr. “Property Rights/Civil Liberties: Two Sides of One Coin,” lecture presented at Stanford University for Cato Institute’s Summer Seminars on Political Economy (August 6, 1978). Reprinted in Liberty Against Power, San Francisco: CA, Fox & Wilkes (1994) p. 210

"Nowhere!" Asimov's Science Fiction (September 1983)
General sources

“The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.”
Letter (December 21, 1898).
1890s

"What We Want," http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1966/09/22/what-we-want/ New York Review of Books, Septmber 22, 1966

Quoted in "Japanese Hurl Veiled Threat", Los Angeles Times (February 11, 1940).

God Is An Iron (1977)
Context: Man has historically devoted much more subtle and ingenious thought to inflicting cruelty than to giving others pleasure — which, given his gregarious nature, would seem a much more survival-oriented behavior. Poll any hundred people at random and you'll find at least twenty or thirty who know all there is to know about psychological torture and psychic castration — and maybe two who know how to give a terrific back-rub.