151 Quotes by Jacques Ellul

Technical civilization has made a great error in not suppressing death, the only human reality still intact

It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence. The whole structure of society of society implies it, of necessity. The more we mobilize the forces of nature, the more must we mobilize men and the more do we require order

Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all others, but at least a partial one: Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.

No technique is possible when men are free.... Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being.

The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself.

It was with the Industrial Revolution, as society plunged ever more eagerly into the conquest of material riches and bent all its energies to the accumulation of goods, that material poverty became a major problem. Obviously, this meant abandonment or downgrading of spiritual values, virtue, etc. To share or not to share in the increase of the collective wealth-this was the Number One question. It was the desire to acquire wealth that prompted the poor to start fighting.

No one knows where we are going, the aim of life has been forgotten, the end has been left behind. Man has set out at tremendous speed- to go nowhere.

Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.

The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.