Propaganda Quotes – Insights on Influence and Communication

"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

"Liberty is traditional and conservative; it remembers its legends and its heroes. But tyranny is always young and seemingly innocent, and asks us to forget the past."

G. K. Chesterton

"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 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

"The first bachelor generation is just climbing the university chairs. People who are perfectly trained in their craft, who have internalized the hegemonic ideology, and who are good advertising media for a system that needs academic confirmation in order to be able to continue to say 'democracy'. This generation already determines what 'good science' is. It fills journals, conference programs, and so eventually textbooks, lectures, and seminars - with topics, perspectives, and terms it has taken from the political agenda and the tenders linked to it, and which it doesn't question because it couldn't learn that anywhere."

Michael Meyen

"In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable."

Walter Lippmann

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

George Bernard Shaw

"Elections are nothing but a psychological trick, for it is the ultra-rich who enforce their will. Voting merely deceives the working masses into believing they are free."

Klaus Kinski

"Many tired old lies are being fed to secondary and college students through their textbooks and their brainwashed teachers, and to the general public through television receivers and daily newspapers. Despite the well-entrenched position of the pseudoscientists and their powerful allies in politics and the communications media, encouraging progress is being made by some scientists. Bit by bit the truth is emerging and the forces of censorship, moral intimidation and liberal bigotry are losing ground."

MOYO-Film

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

Vladimir Lenin

"We are dealing with a problem in which deception has become organized and powerful; where truth is poisoned at its source; where the skills of the cleverest minds are used to mislead a bewildered people."

Walter Lippmann

"There is less and less free journalism and information. It is only about spreading propaganda that serves an elite"

Novak Djokovic

"This is going to be an unpopular truth, especially in the extremely delusional and deceived world we now live in.

But the reality is this: none of what is going on outside is getting better. Nothing improves.

Everything in our world feels fake.
Our food is fake.
Our news is fake.
Our politicians are fake.
Our history is fake.
Even our financial system feels fake.

And the people on our TV screens, on our phone screens — they’re lying to us, because everything is like a scripted movie.

If you want to believe the absolute garbage that is being spoon-fed to us, then that is your prerogative.
But I would hope that by now — five years into this very odd new world, this strange reality we’re living in — most of us have started to recognize that something deeper is going on.

Something more sinister.
Something more… spiritual, even, behind the scenes.

I’ve reached a point where I literally don’t believe anything I see anymore.
Nothing.

Because after the last five years — maybe a bit more — it’s become clear to me that narratives are being pushed.
Distractions are being manufactured.

And in the end…
we are watching a movie."

ashleyhays2.0

"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

"We are all captives of the picture in our head – our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists."

Walter Lippmann