Political Propaganda Quotes

It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that they recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been "spoiled" by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction. They presented disagreements as invariably originating in deep natural, social, or psychological sources beyond the control of the individual and therefore beyond the power of reason. This would have been a shortcoming only if they had sincerely entered into competition with other parties; it was not if they were sure of dealing with people who had reason to be equally hostile to all parties. ~ Hannah Arendt

The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda. ~ Noel Coward

It matters also that both Henry and his daughter Elizabeth were not just rulers but consummate performers, masters of political propaganda and political theater. They ~ G.J. Meyer

On the levels of politics and theology, beauty is perfectly compatible with nonsense and tyranny. Which is very fortunate; for if beauty were incompatible with non­sense and tyranny, there would be precious little art in the world. The masterpieces of painting, sculpture and architecture were produced as religious or political propaganda, for the greater glory of a god, a govern­ment or a priesthood. But most kings and priests have been despotic and all religions have been riddled with superstition. Genius has been the servant of tyranny and art has advertised the merits of the local cult. Time, as it passes, separates the good art from the bad meta­physics. Can we learn to make this separation, not after the event, but while it is actually taking place? That is the question. ~ Aldous Huxley

I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience ...
War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort
by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion
to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war. ~ Howard Zinn

Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't. ~ Brad Holland

The foolish wish to speak out what was spoken in secret by the master. ~ Chanakya

For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event. ~ Barton Gellman

Music is more difficult - try naming a political band. The Dead Kennedys. The Dead Kennedys are political, but they are more funny than they are political. ~ Thom Yorke

Acting is a business and a political act and a craft, but I also feel like it's a service - specifically, for a military audience. ~ Adam Driver

Actually, I think I come at things a whole different way from most people, and, you know, sometimes political answers are one way to solve the problem, and sometimes there are better ways to do it. ~ Craig Benson

We in Africa are always on the receiving end. We have had human slavery, political slavery, economic slavery and now religious slavery. We in the church are saying no. We are prepared to live by what God says, not what you say. Man shall not sleep with man, woman shall not sleep with woman. ~ Peter Akinola

Traffic will not yield to our will, neither will global finances, the environment, political rhetoric, nor people in general. There is no way to solve the problem of stress through blaming environmental factors. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

[N]othing is less reliable than unchecked claims from political officials that their secret conduct is justified by National Security Threats and the desire to Keep Us Safe. ~ Glenn Greenwald

The Cold War was really the great struggle of the 20th Century and it shaped American political life from top to bottom. ~ Jeff Sharlet

What black men, women, children did in Albany at that time was heroic. They overcame a century of passivity, and they did it without the help of the national government. They learned that despite the Constitution, despite the promises, despite the political rhetoric of the government, whatever they accomplished in the future would have to come from them. ~ Howard Zinn

Those who depend on television as their primary information source are condemned to ... A form of political illiteracy. ~ Bill Kraus

I think that people have to have to have a sense of what ideas are one the progressive side, the Democratic side in order ultimately to be effective in the political world. ~ John Podesta

I mean, the people who run Guantanamo, the military, pretty much dismiss complaints by the detainees because they say that they're all created as part of a political process to sort of fake complaints and get public support. ~ Jane Mayer

I believe that I'm entitled to regard my pre-political life as off-limits in terms of what can be looked at and judged. ~ George Osborne

A wise governor told me a long time ago, political capital you don't get more of by keeping it. You get it by using it. ~ Scott Walker

The matted straw cover of the latrine was yanked away. The sun blinded me as I looked up at the dark outline of two young soldiers in tattered camouflage, their uniforms made for men bigger than they were. They each held an automatic weapon, an AK-47, and were leering down at me. I could see the two gold teeth of one of them as he grinned.
Gold-tooth reached down and grabbed my hair, yanking me up by it until he could get the other hand under my arm and pull me the rest of the way. I screamed in terror. He pulled me away from the pit as he and the others held their noses and laughed hysterically. One held each arm and dragged me to the river's edge. They tore off my loose cotton dress; I had no underwear on. After howling with laughter and firing guns in the air, they crudely touched my body. ~ Nick Hahn

There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means. ~ Albert J. Nock

[American] conformism might approximate collectivism, not so much in economic respects, and not too much in political respects, but very much in the pattern of daily life and thought. Whether this will happen or not, and if it does to what degree, is partly dependent on the power of resistance in those who represent the opposite pole of the courage to be, the courage to be as oneself. ~ Paul Tillich

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

With this new stupid Supreme Court ruling, secret money can come in on an unlimited level from corporations. Nobody knows where it comes from. That distorts the political situation in our country tremendously. Most of that money is spent on negative advertising that is tearing down the character and reputation of your opponent, and it works, although most American people say, "We don't like negative advertising," it works. ~ Jimmy Carter

I think in this country [UK] we could do with rather less political correctness and more straight talking across the board. ~ Philip Davies

My family wasn't particularly political. Mom and Dad voted, but that was the extent of their involvement. In fact, I ended up going to U.C. Davis because, to them, Berkeley was too radical. ~ Jackie Speier

The Tea Party has definitely increased political involvement, not only among Tea Party members but among people who oppose the Tea Party members. It's been a general stimulus. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Keynes eliminated economic theory's ancient role as spoilsport for inflationist and statist schemes, leading a new generation of economists on to academic power and to political pelf and privilege. ~ Murray Rothbard

What is music in America? It's this stand-in for political action in a lot of senses. We have no democracy and we have no art culture, and we've long considered politics nebbish-y and hopelessly unsexy. So a lot of what would be considered political activism is channeled into cultural work. ~ Ian Svenonius

Politically I am neither left nor right! And this kind of political-ethical standpoint
being in the middle
usually brings about seclusion and isolation! But now I do not mind it anymore and, instead, I work more and more in my self-made solitude! ~ Javad Alizadeh

The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. But many a mild-eyed scientist in pince-nez, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany: 'Traditional values are to be debunked' and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape at the will (which must, by hypothesis, be an arbitrary will) of some few lucky people in one lucky generation which has learned how to do it. ~ C.S. Lewis

The breakdown of mummies and daddies was an important part of lesbian relationships in the Bagatelle ... For some of us, however, role-playing reflected all the depreciating attitudes toward women which we loathed in straight society. It was the rejection of these roles that had drawn us to 'the life' in the first place. Instinctively, without particular theory or political position or dialectic, we recognized oppression as oppression, no matter where it came from.
But those lesbians who had carved some niche in the pretend world of dominance/subordination rejected what they called our 'confused' lifestyle, and they were in the majority. ~ Audre Lorde

There are two kinds of prosperity gospels. One promises personal health, wealth, and happiness. Another promises social transformation. In both versions, the results are up to us. We bring God's kingdom to earth, either to ourselves or to society, by following certain spiritual laws or moral and political agendas. Both forget that salvation comes from above, as a gift of God. Both forget that because we are baptized into Christ, the pattern of our lives is suffering leading to glory in that cataclysmic revolution that Christ will bring when he returns. Both miss the point that our lives and the world as they are now are not as good as it gets. We do not have our best life or world now. ~ Michael S. Horton

There'll be a growing disparity between economics and politics. An economy that grows so rapidly is intractably global. On the other hand, the current political system is intractably national. So there is a growing dichotomy between a global economy and locally based politics. ~ Walter Wriston

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes. ~ Steve Earle

They will tell you that to be political is to be merely angry, and therefore artless, depthless, "raw," and empty. They will speak of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They will tell you that great writing "breaks free" from the political, thereby "transcending" the barriers of difference, uniting people toward universal truths. They'll say this is achieved through craft above all. Let's see how it's made, they'll say- as if how something is assembled is alien to the impulse that created it. As if the first chair was hammered into existence without considering the human form. ~ Ocean Vuong

President means chief servant ~ Mahatma Gandhi

These facts about today's political climate in the United States, and what they imply, would have horrified Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Adams and all their friends. Whether they were atheists, agnostics, deists or Christians, they would have recoiled in horror from the theocrats of early 21st-century Washington. ~ Richard Dawkins

Art does not organize parties, nor is it the servant or colleague of power. Rather, the work of art becomes a political force simply through the faithful representation of the spirit. It is a political act to create an image of the self or of the collective. ~ Lewis Hyde

What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire to be? Something. ~ Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes

Committed partisans are generally the most knowledgeable voters, independents the least. And the more political knowledge people have, the more apt they are to discuss politics with people who agree with, and reinforce, them. ~ George Will

To truly understand the Nazis," Ulmstrom said, leading the way, "you have to stop considering them as a political party. They called themselves Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - the National Socialist German Workers' Party - but in reality, they were really a cult." "A cult?" Gray asked. "They bore all the trappings, ja? A spiritual leader who could not be questioned, disciples who wore matching clothes, rituals and blood oaths performed in secret, and most important of all, the creation of a potent totem to worship. The Hakenkreuz. The Broken Cross, also called the swastika. A symbol to supplant the crucifix and the Star of David." "Hari krishnas on steroids," Monk mumbled. "Do not joke. The Nazis understood the inherent power of ideas. A power greater than any gun or rocket. They used it to subjugate and brainwash an entire nation. ~ James Rollins

Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth. ~ Alfred Marshall

It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confedes. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The Democratic party today is not so much a political party as a milling herd, and the herd is easily stampeded. ~ Emmett Tyrrell

On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography : lies , distortions, and half-truths half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion. ~ Bill Moyers

The artist tries to show reason in experience and appearance – and lyric is the daily appearance, the commonplace dress, of reason. It shows us the rational. It makes the epic pattern human. It's the footprint on the pathway. In the epic-lyric the individual and particular are no longer isolated but are placed in a historical, social, human pattern. That's why there's a political way of cutting bread or wearing shoes. ~ Edward Bond