Edward Bernays on Literacy and Independent Thought

„Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.“

Edward BernaysEdward Bernays questions whether literacy truly leads to independent thought and democratic judgment.
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Edward L. Bernays was an American pioneer in public relations and mass communication. He is regarded as one of the founders of the modern PR industry.

Edward Bernays challenges the assumption that literacy automatically leads to independent thought and democratic judgment.


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Edward Bernays quote about literacy, education, and independent thought

Edward Louis Bernays (1891–1995) was an Austrian-American public relations consultant and author. He is considered the father of public relations and developed techniques for manipulating public opinion. Bernays combined psychology with advertising and greatly influenced modern marketing and communication practices.

Quote about universal literacy and propaganda by Edward L. BernaysCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine." Edward L. Bernays
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Quote by Bertrand Russell about educational systems designed to control peopleCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Educational systems have been developed not to impart genuine knowledge but to make the people docile to the will of the rulers. Without a sophisticated system of deception in schools, it would be impossible to maintain the appearance of democracy. It is not desired that ordinary citizens think for themselves. Because it is believed that people who think for themselves are difficult to handle. Only the elites are supposed to think. The rest are supposed to obey and follow their leaders, like a herd of mutton. This doctrine has corrupted all state education systems from the ground up, even in democracies." Bertrand Russell
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Quote about education being a form of propaganda by Henry Louis MenckenCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens." Henry Louis Mencken
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Quote by Aldous Huxley about propaganda and human distraction in mediaCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"In regard to propaganda, the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions." Aldous Huxley
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Quote by Henry Louis Mencken about the true aim of public educationCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else." Henry Louis Mencken
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