Propaganda Quotes

{President] Kayibanda's government [in Rwanda] continued the persecution against the Tutsis and began to make use of the media it controlled to launch a propaganda campaign against us. In a country where more than half the people cannot read or write and very few have televisions, radio is the dominant media. The fact that some newspapers were still printing the truth didn't matter much to the part of the population that couldn't read.Most of the literate people were already politically aware. While an educated person might question what they read or hear from the media, the uneducated tend to accept it. The uneducated are more easily affected by threats and the emotional trauma that propaganda like this can create.

~ John Rucyahana

A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal “profile” for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience’s needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their “societal purpose” also requires that the media’s interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups.

~ Noam Chomsky

The truth has no agenda.

~ General George Patton

The propagandist naturally cannot reveal the true intentions of the principal for whom he acts... That would be to submit the projects to public discussion, to the scrutiny of public opinion, and thus to prevent their success... Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such projects, masking true intentions.

~ Jacques Ellul

Much of our media now are so image-rich and content-poor that they just serve to capture the eye, manipulate our emotions, and short-circuit our impulses. The propaganda and advertising industries therefore function increasingly like adult obedience industries. They instruct their audiences in how to feel and what to think, and increasing numbers of people seem to accept and follow the cues without question.

~ Nancy Snow

Nowadays, it is true, we have mass media and expert propaganda to spread suspicion and fear. But the people I mean—and they form the great majority—are not suspicious and fearful, as many educated and more influential persons are. Propaganda has not made them accept the Bomb. We protesters, though we may have won over some of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, have not made them reject it. They remain profoundly, astonishingly, shockingly indifferent.

~ J.b. Priestley

Listen, dis foreign TV channels dey spoil de image of our country. Dese white stations dey make billions of dollars to sell your war and blood to de world… We no bad like dis. OK, why dem no dey show corpses of deir white people during crisis for TV? Abi, people no dey kill for America or Europe?”“You dey speak grammar!” someone shouted. “Wetin concern us wid America and Europe? Abeg, give us cable TV.”“Remove dis toilet pictures!” said another.“So our barracks be toilet now?” the police answered. What an insult!“ You na mad mad police,” Monica said.“Ok, cable TV no be for free anymore!” the police said.“But it’s our pictures we are watching on cable TV,” Madam Aniema said. “Why should we pay you to see ourselves and our people?”The police answered, “Because government dey complain say cable TV dey misrepresent dis religious crisis.

~ Uwem Akpan

Because the Empire controls the media, we can turn any news to the Emperor's advantage.

~ Daniel Wallace

How would we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?

~ Frank Herbert

[I]n 1919, 1920 and 1921, the whole Israelite press stormed the Romanian state unleashing everywhere chaos and exhorting to violence against the regime, the form of government, the Church, the Romanian order, the national idea, patriotism. Now, as if by magic (in 1936), the same press, led exactly by the same people, has turned into a protector of the state order and its laws, and declares itself 'against violence', and we have become the 'enemies of the country', the 'right-wing extremists', 'in the pay and in the service of the enemy of Romanicity', and, before long, we will hear even this: that we are sponsored by the Jews.

~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

Perhaps the media may not always be telling what to think, but it is always telling you what to think about.

~ James Rozoff

If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

~ Thomas Sowell

Manipulating the media is akin to poisoning a nation’s water supply – it affects all of our lives in unimaginable ways.

~ Lance Morcan

When he won, it proved that God was on his side. When he didn't win, it meant that God wanted him to try harder.

~ P.j. Sullivan

There are two opposing conceptions concerning lies. The first is attributed to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who is reputed to have said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” There is another one, attributed to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said: “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”It is clear that the Russian leadership has a preference for Lenin’s approach. Even faced with unequivocal evidence it continues to deny the facts. Apart from unfounded accusations against Georgia of genocide and the denial of its own use of cluster bombs, the war in Georgia was preceded and accompanied by open lies, misinformation (for instance, about “uncontrollable” South Ossetian militias), and active disinformation, all reminiscent of the old Soviet style.In this way Russia almost succeeded in hiding the most important fact: that this was not a “Russian-Georgian war,” but a Russian war against Georgia in Georgia. There was not a single Georgian soldier that crossed the Russian frontier at any point. The Georgian troops that went into South Ossetia did not cross international frontiers, but intervened in their own country, no different from Russian troops intervening in Chechnya. It was Russian and not Georgian troops that crossed the border of another, sovereign country, in breach of the principles of international law [230―31].

~ Marcel H. Van Herpen

For a nation to be corruption free, that culture must first be created through the proclamation and propaganda of a correspondent value system.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Thus, Dr. Curry's claims that much of the fanfare and propaganda we now attribute to the Hitler Youth and the Nuremberg rallies actually originated with American customs, are definitely sound.

~ A.e. Samaan

Patriotism is a villain's last refuge.

~ Xiaobo Liu

If we are considering the history of our own country, we write at length of the periods when our ancestors were prosperous and victorious, but we pass quickly over their shortcomings or their defeats. Our people are represented as patriotic heroes, their enemies as grasping imperialists, or subversive rebels. In other words, our national histories are propaganda, not well balanced investigation.

~ John Bagot Glubb

If such things were not so dangerous one would laugh. But one recognizes the technique. Such propaganda always begins with words, but soon it proceeds to deeds. When there are no facts to support lies, facts must be made.

~ Eric Ambler

You should never use propaganda to teach kids the truth.

~ Lisa Samson

The ritual denunciation of the so-called ‘socialist’ states is replete with distortions and often outright lies.

~ Noam Chomsky

Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry -- that was Adolf Hitler's technique. No matter whether it was true or not -- for (Hitler) meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn't dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seed it, it was God's truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it -- shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night...when ten million join in it becomes history.

~ Upton Sinclair

But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted.

~ Joseph Ratner

In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously. They are all forced, and it is the duty of every honest man to ignore them.

~ Milan Kundera

Terrorist', noun: 1. Someone my government tells me is a terrorist; 2. Someone my President decides to kill.

~ Glenn Greenwald

The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.

~ Glenn Greenwald

• Scientific and medical studies, research or evidence is either distorted and misrepresented, or disputed or outright ignored by opponents whose views are threatened by the facts, in public shows of articles, statements, websites and even legislation. Scientific facts are ignored or dismissed as being ‘a liberal agenda’ or ‘merely propaganda’.

~ Christina Engela

The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

~ Hunter S. Thompson

The truth is usually somewhere in the gray turbulent eddies set in motion by the mixture of black and white.

~ Ken Poirot

Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

~ Erwin Knoll

One of the cardinal rules of journalism: Once you have cabled a story you must stick by it and back it up, unless something completely overwhelming proves you to have been wrong. In such a case, just drop the matter.

~ Wynant Davis Hubbard

Nowhere in the world, Rud reflected, was journalism anything but a malignant and wanton power. Later on, as the Common-sense Movement grew, he had to think a lot about that. He had to spread a new system of ideas throughout the world, and journalism would neither instruct nor inform nor lend itself consistently to any sustained propaganda.

~ H.g. Wells

Engaged Audience Members are receptive to the messages of dangerous speech and to condoning group-targeted harm, but are not hardliners. For example, they may be easily influenced by charismatic leaders who promise to resolve their grievances, or be receptive to blame narratives. This could be any member of society, but certain types of people (based on demographic or other characteristics) may be disproportionately engaged.

~ Rachel Hilary Brown

Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.

~ John Berger

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

~ Alice Walker

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.

~ Henry A. Wallace

I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement.

~ Jon Voight

Choosing sepia is all to do with trying to make the image look romantic and idealistic. It's sort of a soft version of propaganda.

~ Martin Parr