Quotes About Slogans

People go on blithely organizing and believing in the remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.

Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason's having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.

So much of the time, in politics, we try to come up with these clever turns of phrase, slogans or messages, but what the public really wants is just the simple facts.

What is at work in this report is the reduction of language to code. Cliches, coined by the state, become the only acceptable vocabulary. Everyone knows what to say and how to respond. It is scripted. Vocabulary shrinks so that the tyranny of nationalist rhetoric leaves people sputtering state-sanctioned slogans.

Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as lie. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the lie that led to it.

Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as a life. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the life that led to it.

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans – anything except reason.

Dressed all in white, and clutching firmly in their small hands the tiny stems of American flags, the pigmies, monstrous as only children can be when they become the witless mouths of slogans and crusades, charged hungrily, uttering their shrill cries, upon their Gulliver.

You have taught us much. Come with us and join the movement. This movement of yours, does it have slogans? inquired the Chink. Right on! they cried. And they quoted him some. Your movement, does it have a flag? asked the Chink. You bet! and they described their emblem. And does your movement have leaders? Great leaders. Then shove it up your butts, said the Chink. I have taught you nothing.

Glittering generalities! They are blazing ubiquities.

Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catch words.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

who do you honestly believe rules any nation? The apparent rulers, or the real ones behind the scenes who manipulate a nation's finances for their own benefit? Mr. Lincoln is as helpless as you and I. He can only, unfortunate man, give his people slogans, and slogans, it would appear, are what the people want. I have yet to hear of a nation that ever rejected a war.

The usual duty of the "intellectual" is to argue for complexity and to insist that phenomena in the world of ideas should not be sloganized or reduced to easily repeated formulae.

Political slogans are like grain scattered to draw birds into a snare. Find out who's putting up the money for a political party, and then you know what it will do.

Wasn't it true, asked the violinist, that a revolution sometimes degenerated and fell into the hands of men who used its slogans as covers for their love of personal power? And when you had a one-party system and suppressed all criticism, how could any evil be corrected?

The populists are spreading slogans. We have to offer solutions and answers.

Now is not the time to look at the past. Lets look forward to the future. Diplomats know very well that these are standard slogans for those who are engaged in serious crimes.

There are a lot of things that fit on a bumper sticker in terms of either liberty or equality or progress that when made more concrete just don't pan out.

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations

Certainly I remember feeling that it was his dream world, his symbol world, that we were dragged into during those first arguments, and it frightened me, being given--as I saw it--the part of a training dummy, outfitted in colours, slogans, that I could not see.

Every single university student should study philosophy. You need to lead the examined life and question your beliefs. If you don't learn critical thinking, then political debate degenerates into a contest of slogans.

I don't believe in nationalism. I think it's a bunch of slogans. It's a bunch of poor attempts at creating pride. My problem with nationalism is that it becomes exclusionary. We start to exclude people.