#pagan

There are a lot of people who call themselves teachers or leaders, but they're really just propagandists. ↗

— Mos Def

#just #leaders #lot #people #propagandists

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief. ↗

— Jacques Ellul

#arouse #belief #goal #longer #modern

The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. ↗

— Jacques Ellul

#constant #continuous #create #creates #environment

The principles underlying propaganda are extremely simple. Find some common desire, some widespread unconscious fear or anxiety; think out some way to relate this wish or fear to the product you have to sell; then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols over which your customer can pass from fact to compensatory dream, and from the dream to the illusion that your product, when purchased, will make the dream come true. They are selling hope. We no longer buy oranges, we buy vitality. We do not just buy an auto, we buy prestige. And so with all the rest. In toothpaste, for example, we buy not a mere cleanser and antiseptic, but release from the fear of being sexually repulsive. In vodka and whisky we are not buying a protoplasmic poison which in small doses, may depress the nervous system in a psychologically valuable way; we are buying friendliness and good fellowship, the warmth of Dingley Dell and the brilliance of the Mermaid Tavern. With our laxatives we buy the health of a Greek god. With the monthly best seller we acquire culture, the envy of our less literate neighbors and the respect of the sophisticated. In every case the motivation analyst has found some deep-seated wish or fear, whose energy can be used to move the customer to part with cash and so, indirectly, to turn the wheels of industry. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#manipulation #propaganda #sales-techniques #dreams

Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#more #paganism #piety #than

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship. ↗

— William Blum

#dictatorship #propaganda #violence

We have to stop the propaganda, the shameful propaganda used by Kremlin to rehabilitate these old types. ↗

— Garry Kasparov

#old #propaganda #shameful #stop #these

That's basically what's going on now: Everything is propaganda. ↗

— Lindsey Buckingham

#everything #going #now #propaganda

I'm proud of our court. It knocks back a lot of the propaganda the Communists put out about the way America treats her Negroes. ↗

— Nat King Cole

#america #back #communists #court #her

I did not say anything. I was always embarresed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothin was done with the meat except to buy it. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#honor #propaganda #sacrifice #war #propaganda