Communication Quotes – 32 Insightful Sayings

"A half truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality."

Solon

"The Pavlovian strategy in public relations has people conditioned more and more to ask themselves, "What do other people think?" As a result, a common delusion is created: people are incited to think what other people think, and thus public opinion may mushroom out into a mass prejudice. Expressed in psychoanalytic terms, through daily propagandistic noise backed up by forceful verbal cues, people can more and more be forced to identify with the powerful noisemaker. Big brother's voice resounds in all the little brothers."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event"

Walter Lippmann

"Social media has degenerated into a deafening cacophony of groups signaling and repeating their shared myths."

Naval Ravikant

"Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the means of our language."

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein

"There is nothing worse than words of kindness that lie."

Juvenal

"In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the same relation to education as to business or politics. It may be abused. It may be used to over-advertise an institution and to create in the public mind artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against its misuse."

Edward Bernays

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him . . . He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

Harry Gordon Frankfurt

"The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about."

Walter Lippmann

"When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude?"

John Milton

"Languages are the sheaths in which the swords of the spirit are hidden."

Martin Luther

"Language is the source of misunderstandings."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Language is the body of thought."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"My best friend has never spoken a word to me."

Hundeweisheit

"There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one."

Alexander McCall Smith

"Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths."

Eddie Adams

"Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods."

Samuel Phillips Huntington