Mass media

"They feed you this stuff on TV every day and you think everything's different, right? All the time, right? And it's always the same. I can't take it anymore!" Lemmy Kilmister

"How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print." Karl Kraus

"The conception of democracy is the one that I mentioned. The bewildered herd is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops." You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them." Noam Chomsky

"I think there is a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them." Noam Chomsky

"One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." George Orwell

"The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage." Hunter S. Thompson

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston S. Churchill

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." George Orwell

"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is "not done"… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." George Orwell

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." Niccolò Machiavelli

"What is a president, then? He is the mouthpiece of the corporations - and nothing else. [....] We are no longer a democracy. We gave up our constitution long ago. [....] The modern dictatorship doesn't come with brown or black uniforms. We do it with entertainment, with television, with fun, fun. And an education that dumbs down." Gore Vidal

"Having a television in your home is like having a Jew in your living room." Leonard E. Feeney

"Modern man is held in a frenzy of activity, so as not to reflect on the meaning of his life and the world." Albert Schweitzer

"These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you." George Orwell