Gore Vidal Quote on War, Propaganda, and Public Perception

"Our number-one enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the number-one enemy of everyone. It’s not understanding what is actually going on in the world. It’s only once you start to understand that you can make effective decisions and effective plans. Now the question is: who is promoting this ignorance? […] It is bad media. It really is my opinion that the media in general are so bad we have to question whether the world wouldn’t be better off without them all together. They’re so distortive to how the world actually is that the result is we see wars and we see corrupt governments continue on. One of the hopeful things that I have discovered is that nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies. The media could have stopped it if they had searched deep enough — if they hadn’t reprinted government propaganda — they could have stopped it. But what does that mean? Well, that means, basically, populations don’t like wars. Populations have to be fooled into wars. Populations don’t willingly, with open eyes, enter into war. So, if we have a good media environment, we might also have a peaceful environment." Julian Assange

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." Joseph Goebbels