114 Quotes by Michael Parenti

The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.

Not everything written by mainstream scholars serves the powers that be, but very little of it challenges such powers.

People who think they’re free in this world just haven’t come to the end of their leash yet.

You don’t know you’re wearing a leash if you sit by the peg all day.

But for the most part, the press went about its business of blaming the victims, glorifying the police, and demonizing those who fought back.

We are not just passive receptors sponging up a flow of images and information. Perception involves organizing stimuli and data into comprehensible units. In a word, perception is itself an act of selective editing.

Ecology’s implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. They are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity.

Their quest was not to investigate heterodoxy but to insulate themselves from it.

I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my time being a hlgh class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.