I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. 

The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive

A local phrase book, entitled Speak in Korean, has the following handy expressions. In the section ‘On the Way to the Hotel’: ‘Let’s Mutilate US Imperialism!’ In the section ‘Word Order’: ‘Yankees are wolves in...

At first they pretended to laugh to scorn the idea of animals managing a farm for themselves. The whole thing would be over in a fortnight, they said. They put it about that the animals...

The new fashions sold in departmentstores had thrown skilled American seamstresses out of work, you see.They’d been displaced by immigrant girls doing piecework for a pittancein terrible sweatshops. I refused to patronize a garment industrythat...

All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.

thinly disguised propaganda urging women to be decorative, toe the line and marry (rich).

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,...

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

Health makes good propaganda.

But you know, a wizard with black hair and a thick mustache put a curse on Moscow, and Petrograd, too, so that no one would be able to tell the truth without lying. If a...

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...

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...

Playing pool with Korean officials one evening in the Koryo Hotel, which has become the nightspot for foreign businessmen and an increasing number of diplomats (to say nothing of the burgeoning number of spies and...

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the...

You should never use propaganda to teach kids the truth.

Mark, trying his best to distance himself from the cruel and pathetic 21st century, hadn’t listened to the news reports, not even when the dark green jeeps and helicopters showed up in town, men dressed...

La filosofía nos enseña a sentir incertidumbre ante las cosas que nos parecen evidentes. La propaganda, en cambio, nos enseña a aceptar como evidentes cosas sobre las que sería razonable suspender nuestro juicio o sentir...

Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.

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...

Needs are imposed by nature. Wants are sold by society.

Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed...

Nuclear research will go on, and threats, propaganda and bullying will not affect us.

Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.

The history written, taught, and sworn to as ‘the unvarnished truth’ by the establishment—any establishment, left or right, conservative or liberal, capitalist or socialist or fascist—is generally revisionist, narrow in perspective, monolithic, and agenda-driven. In...

Was man wünscht, das glaubt auch jeder.

If I painted a dog statue to look like a cat, the people would pet it. But why paint that when I could paint politicians as honest, for-the-people people?

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

Demonise one of them and the sympathisers will melt away.

Una verdad sin interés puede ser eclipsada por una falsedad emocionante.

God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?

It is always a much easier task to educate uneducated people than to re-educate the mis-educated.

We are all born agnostics. Atheism and theism is sold to us.

Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine—some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone—but the rotund, jowly...

I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about...

Propagandists reveal themselves through their use of tricks such as “name-calling”, employing “glittering generalities”, “plain folks” identifications, “card stacking”, “bandwagon” devices, and so on. Such devices could be identified easily in many religious and political...

All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.

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

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,...

PROPAGANDA (PROP-A-GANDER)An evil grin behind a smiling clown’s maskKamil Ali

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.

Ga thought about reminding the Dear Leader that they lived in a land where people had been trained to accept any reality presented to them.

Heute ist der Terrorist an die Stelle des Mörders von einst getreten.

After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism

Suppose that we agree that the two atrocities can or may be mentioned in the same breath. Why should we do so? I wrote at the time (The Nation, October 5, 1998) that Osama bin...

New concepts should be introduced by the power of imagery.

The assumptions that propagandists are rational, in the sense that they follow their own propaganda theories in their choice of communications, and that the meanings of propagandists’ communications may differ for different people reoriented the...

Jede Propaganda ist so gefährlich wie die Dummheit, auf die sie trifft.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

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