ERNEST HEMINGWAY

There is the great danger and the great difference. France is a country and Great Britain is several countries but Italy is a man, Mussolini, and Germany is a man, Hitler.

A man has ambitions, a man rules until he gets into economic trouble; he tries to get out of this trouble by war. A country never wants war until a man through the power of propaganda convinces it.

Propaganda is stronger now than it has ever been before. Its agencies have been mechanized, multiplied and controlled until, in a state ruled by any one man, truth can never be presented.

MARTIN BUBER
As quoted in Encounter with Martin Buber (1972) by Aubrey Hodes

The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.

HENRY WALLACE
The Danger of American Fascism

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned.

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

HENRY WALLACE
The Danger of American Fascism

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

HANNAH ARENDT
The Origins of Totalitarianism

Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.

 

MALCOLM X

This is the media, an irresponsible media. It will make the criminal look like he is the victim and make the victim look like he is the criminal. If you aren't careful, the media will have you hating the people who are oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

This is a propaganda tactic that I would call psychological warfare.

JUDITH BUTLER

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As long as "security" continues to justify the banning and dispersion of demonstrations, assemblies, and encampments, it serves the decimation of democratic rights and democracy itself. Only a broad-based mobilization—a form of embodied and transnational courage, we might say—will successfully defeat xenophobic nationalism and the various alibis that now threaten democracy.

HANNAH ARENDT

The Origins of Totalitarianism

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Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.

ABUL ʿALA AL-MAʿARRI

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The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: 

Those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains.

PHILIP K. DICK

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The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

HANNAH ARENDT from The Origins of Totalitarianism (1968)

Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.