“But today, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.”

Man is hypnotized by the glitter of his own gadgetry

The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.

The greatest triumphs of propoganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.

Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.

Liberties are not given, they are taken.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.

It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

To be a fool at the right time is also an art.

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

Every ceiling reached becomes a floor.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

There appears to be momentum towards more and more misunderstandings between religions, a degradation of relations.

In which (or where) everyone is mainly (or mostly) trying to assert oneself in front of others (“devant les autres”, Fr.), to appear, and hoping to find in society (“mondaine”, Fr.) relationships some advantages for his interest and vanity (or vainglory or conceit”, Fr).

The brute appears (or come forward, “apparait”, Fr.) and rule over (or dominate), stifling every (“toute”, Fr.) noble, generous impulse; it is then the ruin (or downfall or decline) of any humanity in man.

It would appear… that moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive.

The NRA appears to have evolved into the lobby for gun and ammunition manufacturers rather than gun owners.

The law courts must appear as a threatening gesture toward secret vice.

Because it appears to me a hazardous thing to exchange my soul for my shadow.

I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or to want to stay out of the fray, but today is not one of those moments.