Mass media

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed [...] One of the effects is the need to be first, not even to be true anymore. So what a responsibility you all have; to tell the truth, not to just be first, but to tell the truth. We live in a society now where it’s just first. Who cares? Get it out there. We don’t care who it hurts, we don’t care who we destroy, we don’t care if it’s true. Just say it, sell it. Just say it, sell it. Anything you practice you'll get good at — including BS." Denzel Washington

"Democracy is the method of implementing the will of the financial aristocracy in such a way that the people believe that humanity wanted it that way." Matthias Lubos

"Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.... These organisations (i.e. Fascism and social democracy) are not antipodes, they are twins." Joseph Stalin

"We’re dealing with a culture of teenage babies, they can watch TV, do their homework, and listen to music all at the same time. The strongest appeal you can make is emotional. If you can get their emotions going, make them forget their logic…you’ve got them. At MTV, we don’t shoot for the 14 year olds – WE OWN THEM," Robert (Bob) Pittman

"The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly." Thomas Sowell

"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

"Democracy, the modern world’s holy cow, is in crisis… every kind of outrage is being committed in the name of democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. Democracy is the Free World’s whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of tastes, available to be used and abused at will. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market means they are on sale to the highest bidder." Arundhati Roy

"No State can commit so many follies and deeds of violence as the democratic State, for it alone has the organic consciousness of its infallibility, sanctity, and complete legitimacy. Even the most absolute monarchy has limitations of a hundred kinds, in the personal consciousness of responsibility of the ruler (which under democracy is always put on the intangible "will of the people"), in the court clique, in the Church, in the advisers and ministers and "government circles" that inevitably crystallize around every potentate. Moreover, the fear of dethronement, which is theoretically always possible, affects every sole-ruler. But a treacherous circular reasoning protects the rule of the "sovereign people" from any limitation — it is in the right because it is the collective will, and is the collective will because it is in the right." Egon Friedell

"The very first thing we have to understand is that the mainstream media are not a mirror of reality. Not even a distorted mirror of reality, but provide us with a reality that is constructed according to its very own points of view. Which is made to influence us in a certain way." Prof. Dr. Michael Meyen

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them." Philip K. Dick

"The Germ Theory of infectious contagious disease is convenient because it provides what every simplistic view of a problem seeks before all else: a culprit, an invisible hare for the hounds to chase in their costly research labs, universities, hospitals, and drug factories. The fact that the hare can never be caught is the perfect guarantee that their race will never finish, their demands for funding will never cease, and their ability to generate profits for the drug and chemical corporations will continue to grow." Montague R. Leverson

"For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence -- on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match." John F. Kennedy

"The most dangerous Weapons of Mass Destruction are the Mass Media. For they destroy the people's spirit, creativity and courage, replacing them by fear, mistrust, guilt and self-doubt." M.A.Verick

"We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest." James Paul Warburg