Mass Media Quotes – Perspectives on Communication and Society

"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

"Is any of it real? I mean, look at this, look at it! A world built on fantasy! Synthetic emotions in the form of pills! Psychological warfare in the form of advertising! Mind altering chemicals in the form of food! Brainwashing seminars in the form of media! Controlled isolated bubbles in the form of social networks. Real? You want to talk about reality? We haven't lived in anything remotely close to it since the turn of the century! We turned it off, took out the batteries, snacked on a bag of GMOs, while we tossed the remnants into the ever expanding dumpster of the human condition. We live in branded houses, trademarked by corporations, built on bipolar numbers, jumping up and down on digital displays, hypnotizing us into the biggest slumber mankind has ever seen. You'd have to dig pretty deep, kiddo, before you can find anything real. We live in a kingdom of bullshit, that even you have lived in for far too long. So don't tell me about not being real: I'm no less real than the fucking beef patty in your big mac. As far as you are concerned, Elliot, I am very real. We are all together now, whether you like it or not."

Christian Slater

"The State is the Mafia pretending to a Human Rights Organization"

Dave Smith

"The people in the public relations industry aren’t there for the fun of it. They’re doing work. They’re trying to instill the right values. In fact, they have a conception of what democracy ought to be: It ought to be a system in which the specialized class is trained to work in the service of the masters, the people who own the society. The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. They ought to be sitting alone in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you’re watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism. That’s all there is in life. You may think in your own head that there’s got to be something more in life than this, but since you’re watching the tube alone you assume, I must be crazy …"

Noam Chomsky

"We see entire societies suddenly fixate their thoughts on a single topic and lose their minds; millions of people are simultaneously gripped by a single delusion until their attention is captured by a new absurdity more fascinating than the first."

Charles MacKay

"Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. It preaches a contempt for the working class unexampled for centuries past, and it dresses its members in a uniform which was at one time peculiar to manual workers and was adopted for that reason. It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty. Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely."

George Orwell

"Propaganda is not designed to make idiots out of people. It's designed for idiots from the start."

George Bernard Shaw

"Interest groups make the policy. They pull the strings on which political puppets hang, who are allowed to pretend democracy on the stage of the Berlin puppet show. These political figures are then allowed to deflate their speech bubbles in the public service institutions with the toilet ladies Christiansen and Illner. And if there is still some dribbling left after their intellectual urination, they can mingle with the people at the emotional piss trough on Beckmann and Kerner."

Georg Schramm

"The longer I live, the more convinced I am that this planet is used as an insane asylum by other planets."

George Bernard Shaw

"Puzzlement and doubt are, however, already crimes in the totalitarian state. The mind that is open for questions is open for dissent. In the totalitarian regime the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed. The totalitarian slave is only allowed to memorize, to salivate when the bell rings."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"Friends, the press and the government have begun a relationship so intimate and immoral that it would make Satan himself blush with shame. Journalists used to question reasons for war and denounce abuses of power. Now they are like toothless babies, sucking on pacifiers of misinformation, only to poop it out into the diaper we call the 6 o'clock news."

Kent Brockman

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"World events do not occur by accident. They are made to happen, whether it is to do with national issues or commerce; and most of them are staged and managed by those who hold the purse strings."

Denis Healey

"What makes the difference between a gang and a state is the belief that there is a difference between a gang and a state."

Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

"The psychopaths are always around. In calm times we study them, but in times of upheaval, they rule over us."

Ernst Kretschmer

"Mental slavery is the worst form of Slavery. It gives you the illusion of freedom, makes you trust, love and defend your oppressor while making an enemy of those who are trying to free you or open your eyes."

Words Of Wisdom

"Not a day goes by without the mainstream media reporting on some war, epidemic, or other problem in the world. The problem is that this type of reporting, as we find it, is sheer madness. Information is distorted or not mentioned at all. It is the partial truths that make the press so dangerous. Wars are sold as “humanitarian interventions,” diseases are pushed to play into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry. There are always two sides to every coin, but we are only shown one side, which is supposed to be the “truth.” They show us what they want us to see and leave out what does not fit into their desired worldview. At this point, we should ask ourselves whether we want to continue consuming this filth and supporting it financially by buying certain tabloids such as Bild, Spiegel & Co. “Either you rebel, or you become complicit.”"

Ignazio Silone

"America was conceived in violence. Americans are attracted to violence. They attach themselves to processed violence, out of cans. They’re TV – hypnotized. TV is the invisible protective shield against bare reality. Twentieth-century culture’s disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movie, theatre, pop idols, and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in reality of their own lives, they’re emotionally dead."

Jim Morrison