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Quotes About Propaganda

The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Ein gespaltenes Volk ist ein lenkbares Volk. Es sucht nach Feinden und einem Führer.
~ Sibylle Berg
In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth.
~ Siegfried Sassoon
La caza de brujas alcanzó su punto máximo entre 1580 y 1630. [...] Antes de que los vecinos se acusaran entre sí [...] tuvo lugar un adoctrinamiento sostenido en el que las autoridades expresaron públicamente su preocupación por la propagación de las brujas y viajaron de aldea en aldea para enseñarle a la gente a reconocerlas [...] llevando consigo listados de mujeres sospechosas de ser brujas y amenazando con castigar a quienes les dieran asilo o les brindaran ayuda.
~ Silvia Federici
There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything.
~ Simon Blackburn
When Sagirashvili accused him of propagating anti-Menshevik lies in his Pravda, 'he would grin in a seemingly good-natured way' and explain, in a pre-Orwellian dictum, that a 'lie always has a stronger effect than the truth. The main thing is to
~ Simon Sebag Montefiore
obtain one's objective.' As Stalin later told Molotov, 'Truth is protected by a battalion of lies.
~ Simon Sebag Montefiore
Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'?
~ Sinclair Lewis
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.
~ Sir Henry Wotton
Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.
~ Jacques Ellul
North Koreans were indoctrinated from birth to believe that their lives were meaningless, that they existed only to serve the State, the Revolution, and the Great Leader.
~ Max Brooks
If you want to make your enemy into something you can hate, you first remove his humanity.... Had Ulrich said that at one point, or had that been something he'd heard during one of Solaris' speeches? It was true, whoever had said it, and the Chronicles had certainly tried to remove all vestige of humanity from these Heralds. Make them only icons. When they are seen as a type, and not as individuals, they are easy for a fanatical mind to grasp—and hate.
~ Mercedes Lackey
Julian and his team of copy-writers had noted that the phrase 'Lest we forget' had so far been reserved for fallen soldiers. In minutes they had created a viral post accusing 'crazed trans multi-cultural zealots' of claiming that a dead transsexual was as much an English hero as the fighter pilots who had died during the Battle of Britain. Malika's algorithms then swiftly sent the message to the people most likely to be annoyed by it.
~ Ben Elton
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders," Hermann Goering, the number two man in the Reich, once observed. "That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
~ Ben Fountain
Alla gente tutta quella falsità non fa né caldo né freddo, forse perché l'ininterrotta propaganda commerciale della vita americana le ha instillato soglie eccezionalmente alte di tolleranza per le simulazioni, le gonfiature, le distorsioni, le stronzate e le vere e proprie menzogne, in altre parole per la pubblicità in ogni sua forma.
~ Ben Fountain
Truth is ever feeble against passionate falsehood.
~ Bernard Cornwell
Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
~ Bertrand Russell
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? The reason is clearly that the human heart as modern civilisation has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied, because it feels deply, perhaps even unconsciously, that it has somehow missed the meaning of life, that perhaps others, but not we ourselves, have secured the good things which nature offers man's enjoyment.
~ Bertrand Russell
The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful.
~ Bertrand Russell
I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions are generated.
~ Bertrand Russell
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
~ Bertrand Russell
Propaganda is only successful when it is in harmony with something in the patient: his desire for an immortal soul, for health, for the greatness of his nation, or what not. Where there is no such fundamental reason for acquiescence, the assertions of authority are viewed with cynical scepticism. One of the advantages of democracy, from the governmental point of view, is that it makes the average citizen easier to deceive, since he regards the government as his government.
~ Bertrand Russell
Our system of education turns young people out of the schools able to read, but for the most part unable to weigh evidence or to form an independent opinion. They are then assailed, throughout the rest of their lives, by statements designed to make them believe all sorts of absurd propositions, such as that Blank's pills cure all ills, that Spitzbergen is warm and fertile, and that Germans eat corpses.
~ Bertrand Russell
The three things needed to prevent revolution are government propaganda in education, respect for law, even in small things, and justice in law and administration, i.e., "equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own" (1307a, 1307b, 1310a).
~ Bertrand Russell