#p

Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol. ↗

— Stanley Hauerwas

#worship

Wow, Cross. I think you missed your calling. Screw demon hunting: you should clearly be writing Hallmark cards. ↗

— Rachel Hawkins

#hallmark-cards #sophie #demons

Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon." [From the author's concluding Historical Note] ↗

— C.J. Sansom

#armageddon #book-of-revelation #cruelty #destruction #fundamentalism

That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#politics #propaganda

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise. ↗

— Joseph Goebbels

#propaganda

Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for “harmony with nature”—there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears.... In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#manufacturing #nature #productivity #survival #nature

The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function. ↗

— Glenn Greenwald

#fear #iraq-war #journalism #lies #media

(World War I) was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#propaganda #war #writers #wwi #propaganda

Propaganda is a sprinter, but truth is a long-distance runner. ↗

— Ernest Partridge

#propaganda

Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions. ↗

— Cory Doctorow

#propaganda