Quotes from Jacques Ellul

Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.

In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act.

The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.

Because of the myth of progress, it is much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight-edged one.

Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it.

Journalistic content is a technical complex expressly intended to adapt man to the machine.

No technique is possible when men are free. Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being.

I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.

Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.

God is not an encyclopedia whose task is to satisfy our curiosity.

Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement.

Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.

Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.

The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation.

Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.

Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.

For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived.

All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis.

Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible.

Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.

Salvation is universal because the love of God encompasses all. If God is God and if God is love, nothing is outside the love of God. A place like hell is thus inconceivable.

The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.

The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this link with one's neighbor.