Quotes about propaganda
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Randal Marlin photo
Karen Kwiatkowski photo

“It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together.”

Karen Kwiatkowski (1960) retired military officer and author

Interview by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, " The Lie Factory http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html", Mother Jones, January/February 2004.

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The mother tongue is propaganda.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

The University of Windsor review, Volumes 1-2, 1965, p. 10
1960s

Michael Savage photo
Lavrentiy Beria photo

“If we can effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore we must continue propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of citizens in general and of teen-agers in particular.”

Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953) Georgian Soviet NKVD police chief under fellow Georgian and Soviet leader Stalin

Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics

Peter F. Drucker photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Gertrude Stein photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Monte Melkonian photo
Alex Jones photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Ali Khamenei photo
Gore Vidal photo

“You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

On American Altruism http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=338
2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

Howard Dean photo

“"My view is FOX News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party and I don't comment on FOX News." --June 12, 2005”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/061205_ns_howard_dean.html

George W. Bush photo
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani photo
Arthur Ponsonby photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Aneurin Bevan photo
Logan Pearsall Smith photo
Edward Bernays photo
Lyndon LaRouche photo

“[The Leesburg Garden Club is a] nest of Soviet fellow travelers clacking busybodies in a Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

Quoted in Chicago Tribune (2 December 1988) "Ex-Aide: LaRouche Extravagant" p. 13.
Attributed

Bob Dylan photo

“Money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

George W. Bush photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Ali Khamenei photo

“Furthermore, all the Western politicians, intellectuals and journalists are obliged to pay homage and bow to the monument that commemorates those allegedly killed in the Nazi concentration camps. In other words, all should acknowledge the veracity of something that has not been proven! This is also one of the propaganda means being applied by the Zionists to portray themselves as the victims of persecution!”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

"Leader's Statements in a Meeting with Participants in IWMC" http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=162&Itemid=31, Khamenei.ir (January 31, 2002)
2001

C. D. Broad photo
I. F. Stone photo

“Every time we are confronted with a new revolution we take to the opium pipes of our own propaganda.”

I. F. Stone (1907–1989) American investigative journalist and author

I.F. Stone's Weekly (1963-01-21)

Daniel Dennett photo

“If I were designing a phony religion, I'd surely include a version of this little gem — but I'd have a hard time saying it with a straight face:If anybody ever raises questions of objections about our religion that you cannot answer, that person is almost certainly Satan. In fact, the more reasonable the person is, the more eager to engage you in open-minded and congenial discussion, the more sure you can be that you're talking to Satan in disguise! Turn away! Do not listen! It's a trap!What is particularly cute about this trick is that it is a perfect "wild card," so lacking in content that any sect or creed or conspiracy can use it effectively. Communist cells can be warned that any criticism they encounter is almost sure to be the work of FBI infiltrators in disguise, and radical feminist discussion groups can squelch any unanswerable criticism by declaring it to be phallocentric propaganda being unwittingly spread by a brainwashed dupe of the evil patriarchy, and so forth. This all-purpose loyalty-enforcer is paranoia in a pill, sure to keep the critics muted if not silent.Did anyone invent this brilliant adaptation, or is it a wild meme that domesticated itself by attaching itself to whatever memes were competing for hosts in its neighborhood? Nobody knows, but now it is available for anybody to use — although, if this book has any success, its virulence should diminish as people begin to recognize it for what it is.”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Eugene V. Debs photo
Peter Kreeft photo

“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 (1937) American philosopher

Source: "The Pillars of Unbelief," National Catholic Register Jan-Feb 1988

Aron Ra photo
Koenraad Elst photo
David Cameron photo

“The extremists are the ones who have the money, the leaders, the iconography and the propaganda machines. We need to turn the tables.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Jacques Ellul photo

“Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.”

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.

Rudolf Rocker photo

“The view which sees in every capitalist only a profit machine may very well meet the demands of propaganda, but it is conceived much too narrowly and does not correspond to reality.”

Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"
Context: The view which sees in every capitalist only a profit machine may very well meet the demands of propaganda, but it is conceived much too narrowly and does not correspond to reality. Even in modern giant capitalism the power-political interests frequently play a larger part than the purely economic considerations, although it is difficult to separate them from each other... The morbid desire to make millions of men submissive to a definite will and to force whole empires into courses which are useful to the secret purposes of small minorities, is frequently more evident in the typical representatives of modern capitalism than are purely economic considerations or the prospect of greater material profit. The desire to heap up ever increasing profits today no longer satisfies the demands of the great capitalistic oligarchies. Every one of its members knows what enormous power the possession of great wealth places in the hands of the individual and the caste to which he belongs. This knowledge gives a tempting incentive and creates that typical consciousness of mastery whose consequences are frequently more destructive than the facts of monopoly itself.

Alan Moore photo

“I suppose any form of art can be said to be propaganda for a state of mind. Inevitably, if you are creating a painting, or writing a story, you are making propaganda, in a sense, for the way that you feel, the way that you think, the way that you see the world.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)
Context: I suppose any form of art can be said to be propaganda for a state of mind. Inevitably, if you are creating a painting, or writing a story, you are making propaganda, in a sense, for the way that you feel, the way that you think, the way that you see the world. You are trying to express your own view of reality and existence, and that is inevitably going to be a political action—especially if your view of existence is too far removed from the mainstream view of existence. Which is how an awful lot of writers have gotten into terrible trouble in the past.

Jacques Ellul photo

“Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world.”

From the Vintage paperback (1973), p. xvii
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: 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.

Jon Stewart photo

“I am sick of deconstructing their propaganda, because it's pretty much the same as it's always been. It's just repeating something over and over again until we believe it and we hope that you believe it.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Hartford Advocate Interview (2008)

Philip Pullman photo

“There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time.”

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss
Context: If you're the bearer of the knife, you have a task that's greater than you can imagine. A child... How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be.... There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time...."
He stopped to take in several rattling breaths.
"The knife," he went on after a minute. "They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn't have anything like the knife; but now..."
"I didn't want it! I don't want it now!" Will cried. "If you want it, you can have it! I hate it, and I hate what it does — "
"Too late. You haven't any choice: you're the bearer. It's picked you out. And, what's more, they know you've got it; and if you don't use it against them, they'll tear it from your hands and use it against the rest of us, forever and ever."

Noam Chomsky photo

“Here it happened in the way American propaganda always works: by servility and cowardice and class interest.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Talk at University of California, Berkeley, 1984
Context: When the state says, "Whip up hysteria against the," everybody starts yelling, jumping up and down, and screaming about the evil empire… See, if it happened in, say, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, we know how they pulled it off. Namely, an order came from the Ministry of Truth, and everybody had to obey it. Now that didn't happen here. Here it happened in the way American propaganda always works: by servility and cowardice and class interest.

James P. Hogan photo

“We're so saturated with propaganda every way you look that we don't notice it. But when it isn't there, you notice.”

James P. Hogan (1941–2010) British writer

Source: Paths to Otherwhere (1996), Ch. 28

John F. Kennedy photo

“No one should be under the illusion that negotiations for the sake of negotiations always advance the cause of peace. If for lack of preparation they break up in bitterness, the prospects of peace have been endangered. If they are made a forum for propaganda or a cover for aggression, the processes of peace have been abused.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address at the University of Washington
Context: No one should be under the illusion that negotiations for the sake of negotiations always advance the cause of peace. If for lack of preparation they break up in bitterness, the prospects of peace have been endangered. If they are made a forum for propaganda or a cover for aggression, the processes of peace have been abused. But it is a test of our national maturity to accept the fact that negotiations are not a contest spelling victory or defeat. They may succeed — they may fail. They are likely to be successful only if both sides reach an agreement which both regard as preferable to the status quo — an agreement in which each side can consider its own situation to be improved. And this is most difficult to obtain. But, while we shall negotiate freely, we shall not negotiate freedom. Our answer to the classic question of Patrick Henry is still no-life is not so dear, and peace is not so precious, "as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery." And that is our answer even though, for the first time since the ancient battles between Greek city-states, war entails the threat of total annihilation, of everything we know, of society itself. For to save mankind's future freedom, we must face up to any risk that is necessary. We will always seek peace — but we will never surrender.

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Equality (1943)
Context: There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values — offers food to some need which we have starved.

Jacques Ellul photo

“Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life.”

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.

Miguna Miguna photo

“Money has never won any elections. Cartel propaganda fueled by evil, lies and malice will not emerge victorious against righteousness, integrity and vision”

Miguna Miguna (1962) lawyer, author and columnist

Facebook post in response to detractors, https://www.facebook.com/GovernorMigunaMiguna/posts/562185893970795,2016
2016
Context: In other words, the inept and malicious propaganda against me will not work. Money has never won any elections. Cartel propaganda fueled by evil, lies and malice will not emerge victorious against righteousness, integrity and vision. I represent hope and a fully liberated and cleaned up Nairobi while the cartels are determined to protect and fortify the rotten, corrupt and exploitative status quo.

Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)
Context: Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent. And all the time the desire grows for a system which will lift them from the position of 'rice-eating robots' to the status of human beings who can think and speak freely and hold their heads high in the security of their rights.

Bill O'Reilly photo

“These people use propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information. They lie, distort, defame all the time.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

on MoveOn.org organizing a petition to the Nevada Democratic Party to drop Fox News as a debate sponsor. George Soros, financier, and Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance, made donations to MoveOn.org.
Context: The Soros-Lewis mob despises Fox News because we have their number and report on them accurately. They use the MoveOn website to smear this network and others with whom they disagree. These people use propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information. They lie, distort, defame all the time.

Peter Kropotkin photo

“By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propaganda than thousands of pamphlets.
Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt: it breeds daring.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

The Spirit of Revolt (1880)
Context: Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come. Nevertheless, the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage, and they find imitators. In proportion as the pioneers go to fill the jails and the penal colonies, others continue their work; acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply.
Indifference from this point on is impossible. Those who at the beginning never so much as asked what the "madmen" wanted, are compelled to think about them, to discuss their ideas, to take sides for or against. By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propaganda than thousands of pamphlets.
Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt: it breeds daring. The old order, supported by the police, the magistrates, the gendarmes and the soldiers, appeared unshakable, like the old fortress of the Bastille, which also appeared impregnable to the eyes of the unarmed people gathered beneath its high walls equipped with loaded cannon. But soon it became apparent that the established order has not the force one had supposed.

Margaret Atwood photo

“Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.”

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian
Context: Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right —
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.

“It’s time we all acknowledged the genius of the North’s propaganda apparatus, however much distaste we feel about it. It works with the grain of human nature.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

Kim Il Sung’s first speech in Pyongyang in October 1945 went down terribly, because he lacked the natural charisma to make plausible the biographical legend the Soviets had chosen for him. But the propaganda apparatus quickly made clear that by swallowing his legend, the whole nation could regard its own colonial past in a nobler light. In celebrating the leader as the embodiment of ethnic virtues, 25 million people celebrate themselves. Which is not to say the cult hasn’t cooled a lot.
2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Jacques Ellul photo

“Without the scientific research of modern psychology and sociology there would be no propaganda, or rather we still would be in the primitive stages of propaganda that existed in the time of Pericles or Augustus.”

Vintage, p. 4
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: First of all, modern propaganda is based on scientific analyses of psychology and sociology. Step by step, the propagandist builds his techniques on the basis of his knowledge of man, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his conditioning — and as much on social psychology as on depth psychology. He shapes his procedures on the basis of our knowledge of groups and their laws of formation and dissolution, of mass influences, and of environmental limitations. Without the scientific research of modern psychology and sociology there would be no propaganda, or rather we still would be in the primitive stages of propaganda that existed in the time of Pericles or Augustus.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“The propaganda of prejudice and hatred which sought to keep the colored men from supporting the national cause completely failed. The black man showed himself the same kind of citizen, moved by the same kind of patriotism, as the white man. They were tempted, but not one betrayed his country.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Progress of a People (1924)
Context: The propaganda of prejudice and hatred which sought to keep the colored men from supporting the national cause completely failed. The black man showed himself the same kind of citizen, moved by the same kind of patriotism, as the white man. They were tempted, but not one betrayed his country. Among well-nigh 400,000 colored men who were taken into the military service, about one-half had overseas experience. They came home with many decorations and their conduct repeatedly won high commendation from both American and European commanders.

Jacques Ellul photo

“Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.”

Vintage, p. 61
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda — not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all others, but at least a partial one: Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.

Noam Chomsky photo

“Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Chomsky on Miseducation, 1999 http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~rgibson/rouge_forum/newspaper/fall2001/Chomsky.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999
Context: Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is.

Jacques Ellul photo

“The civic and technological good will and the enthusiasm for the right social myths — both created by propaganda — will finally have solved the problem of man.”

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: In the midst of increasing mechanization and technological organization, propaganda is simply the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to persuade man to submit with good grace. When man will be fully adapted to this technological society, when he will end by obeying with enthusiasm, convinced of the excellence of what he is forced to do, the constraint of the organization will no longer be felt by him; the truth is, it will no longer be a constraint, and the police will have nothing to do. The civic and technological good will and the enthusiasm for the right social myths — both created by propaganda — will finally have solved the problem of man.

Vintage, p. xviii

Peter Kropotkin photo

“Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

The Spirit of Revolt (1880)
Context: Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come. Nevertheless, the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage, and they find imitators. In proportion as the pioneers go to fill the jails and the penal colonies, others continue their work; acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply.
Indifference from this point on is impossible. Those who at the beginning never so much as asked what the "madmen" wanted, are compelled to think about them, to discuss their ideas, to take sides for or against. By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propaganda than thousands of pamphlets.
Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt: it breeds daring. The old order, supported by the police, the magistrates, the gendarmes and the soldiers, appeared unshakable, like the old fortress of the Bastille, which also appeared impregnable to the eyes of the unarmed people gathered beneath its high walls equipped with loaded cannon. But soon it became apparent that the established order has not the force one had supposed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to AFL–CIO (1961)
Context: Negroes are almost entirely a working people…. Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.

Noam Chomsky photo

“Moral equivalence is a term of propaganda that was invented to try to prevent us from looking at the acts for which we are responsible. …There is no such notion.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Tim Sebastian on BBC NEWS, February 2, 2002 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020227.htm.
Quotes 2000s, 2002
Context: Moral equivalence is a term of propaganda that was invented to try to prevent us from looking at the acts for which we are responsible.... There is no such notion. There are many different dimensions and criteria. For example, there's no moral equivalence between the bombing of the World Trade Center and the destruction of Nicaragua or of El Salvador, of Guatemala. The latter were far worse, by any criterion. So there's no moral equivalence.

Meher Baba photo

“If instead of doing the real work of love you start doing organized propaganda work for me, it is absurd. I need no propaganda or publicity. I do not want propaganda and publicity, but I do want love and honesty.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

What Baba Means by Real Work (1954)
Context: If instead of doing the real work of love you start doing organized propaganda work for me, it is absurd. I need no propaganda or publicity. I do not want propaganda and publicity, but I do want love and honesty. If you cannot live the life of love and honesty, you should stop working for me. I am quite capable of doing my Universal Work alone.

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The literate man is a sucker for propaganda... You cannot propagandize a native. You can sell him rum and trinkets, but you cannot sell him ideas.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, The Education of Mike McManus, TVOntario, December 28 1977

Jacques Ellul photo

“In the midst of increasing mechanization and technological organization, propaganda is simply the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to persuade man to submit with good grace.”

Vintage, p. xviii
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: In the midst of increasing mechanization and technological organization, propaganda is simply the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to persuade man to submit with good grace. When man will be fully adapted to this technological society, when he will end by obeying with enthusiasm, convinced of the excellence of what he is forced to do, the constraint of the organization will no longer be felt by him; the truth is, it will no longer be a constraint, and the police will have nothing to do. The civic and technological good will and the enthusiasm for the right social myths — both created by propaganda — will finally have solved the problem of man.

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker photo

“Education is a slow process, and may not come too quickly. Anarchists who endeavor to hasten it by joining in the propaganda of State Socialism or revolution make a sad mistake indeed.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Editorial postscript to and edition of State Socialism and Anarchism : How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (11 August 1926)
Context: Education is a slow process, and may not come too quickly. Anarchists who endeavor to hasten it by joining in the propaganda of State Socialism or revolution make a sad mistake indeed. They help to so force the march of events that the people will not have time to find out, by the study of their experience, that their troubles have been due to the rejection of competition. If this lesson shall not be learned in a season, the past will be repeated in the future, in which case we shall have to turn for consolation to the doctrine of Nietzsche that this is bound to happen anyhow, or to the reflection of Renan that, from the point of view of Sirius, all these matters are of little moment.

Maharana Pratap photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Swami Shraddhanand photo

“Some of his writings about the Muslims expressed harsh and provocative judgments. But (….) they were invariably written in response to writings or pronouncements of Muslims which either vehemently attacked Hinduism, the Arya Samaj, and the Swami himself, or which supported methods such as (…) the killing of apostates, and the use of devious and unfair means of propaganda.”

Swami Shraddhanand (1856–1926) Indian monk and philosopher

He himself “never advocated unfair, underhand or violent methods”.
Prof. J.T.F. Jordens, (Jordens 1981: 174-175) quoted from Elst, Koenraad. Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars. (2019). New Delhi : Rupa.

Madhu Kishwar photo
Narendra Modi photo
Fiona Hill (presidential advisor) photo

“I never taught of book burning, no matter how they were silly, mendacious or propaganda-like because I guide myself by the principle that every book burning was just an introduction to burning (of people) at the stake.”

Ivica Šola (1968) Croatian theologian, communication scientist, columnist and university professor.

Quoted in column "O Bleiburgu i Titu očito može i bez fusnota: pa nećemo se valjda zamarati tamo nekim izvorima" https://www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/misljenja/agora/clanak/id/597177/o-bleiburgu-i-titu-ocito-moze-i-bez-fusnota-pa-necemo-se-valjda-zamarati-tamo-nekim-izvorima in Slobodna Dalmacija, 4th April 2019.

William L. Shirer photo
Vladimir Putin photo
Milton Friedman photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Tony Benn photo
H. G. Wells photo

“The authorities in Soviet Russia seem as timorous about subversive propaganda as Conservative old ladies in England. Russia is still a fastness of orthodoxy, even if the guardianship of orthodoxy has changed hands.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

“Stalin-Wells Talk: The Verbatim Report and A Discussion”, G.B. Shaw, J.M. Keynes et al., London, The New Statesman and Nation, (1934) p. 19

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Dana Loesch photo

“We’ve had it with your narratives, your propaganda, your fake news.”

Dana Loesch (1978) American conservative political commentator

We’ve had it with your constant protection of your Democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life. And we’ve had it with your tone-deaf assertion that you are in any way truth or fact-based journalism. Consider this the shot across your proverbial bow. In short? We’re coming for you.
April 2017, in episode 1 of season 7 of the NRATV series Commentators entitled Taking on the Times, and in an August 2017 one-minute promotional video drawn from the episode, speaking of The New York Times ([Dana, Loesch, Taking on the Times, NRATV, April 2017, May 23, 2019, https://www.nratv.com/episodes/commentators-season-7-episode-1-taking-on-the-times]; [Dana, Loesch, Dana Loesch: We're Coming For You New York Times, NRATV, April 2017, May 23, 2019, https://www.nratv.com/videos/commentators-dana-loesch-were-coming-for-you-new-york-times]; [NRA’s video message to ‘elites’: ‘We’re coming for you’, Associated Press, Lisa Marie, Pane, August 27, 2017, May 23, 2019, https://www.apnews.com/c8cfcc9f96de439ca0d7d7c338f97949]; [Amanda, Holpuch, The Guardian, 'We're coming for you': NRA attacks New York Times in provocative video, August 5, 2017, May 23, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/05/nra-new-york-times-video-coming-for-threat-dana-loesch]; [USA Today, NRA to 'New York Times': We're coming for you, Ryan W., Miller, August 4, 2017, May 23, 2019, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/08/04/nra-new-york-times-were-coming-you/541826001/])

Marlene Dietrich photo

“Jungs! Opfert euch nicht! Der krieg ist doch scheiße, Hitler ist ein idiot! (message in a pro-allied propaganda broadcast) Translation: Boy! Do not sacrifice yourself! The war is but shit, Hitler is an idiot!”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend https://books.google.com/books?id=MahIKu7q9X0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Marlene+Dietrich:+Life+and+Legend&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-8OTo5P3YAhUMIcAKHbcdBp4Q6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Anders Behring Breivik photo

“A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused by enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy.”

The evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation. […] the U.S. media’s practical definitions of worth are political in the extreme and fit well the expectations of a propaganda model. While this differential treatment occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and public are able to remain unconscious of this fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone. This is evidence of an extremely effective propaganda system. […] The worth of a victim Popieluszko [Polish priest] is valued at somewhere between 137 and 179 times that of a victim in the U.S. client states, or, looking at the matter in reverse, a priest murdered in Latin America is worth less than a hundredth of a priest murdered in Poland.
Source: Manufacturing Consent, with Noam Chomsky, 1988, pp. 37, 39.

James K. Morrow photo

“Don’t believe everything you hear about hell. Next time you run into some anti-hell propaganda, consider the source.”

“You inflict eternal punishment on people,” Julie countered.
“Merely because it’s our job. And remember, we persecute only the guilty, which puts us one up on most other institutions.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 9 (p. 162)