323 Quotes About Ideology

Truth cannot be constructed. To live in ideology is, as Havel so eloquently reminds us, inevitably to live in a lie. Truth can only be revealed. We cannot be creators, only receptors.

When words possessing a high degree of terroristic menace become desemanticized in a ritualized literary culture, they not only cease to mean what they had meant, but also lose common elements of meaning, which become unstable and easily replaceable; then all the speakers of this ideological language become extremely vulnerable; the drifting ideological meanings harbor mortal danger.

Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct something to take its place.

A man without ideology has a life without purpose.

If you read a few books, you will arrive at an ideology and call it truth. If you read the whole library, you will say that alphabets are the only truth; one can write anything with them and believe in it. And when you realize that every language has different alphabets, you will say that even alphabets are not truth. Then you will have the supreme experience of nothingness.

Control the manner in which a man interprets his world, and you have gone a long way toward controlling his behavior. That is why ideology, an attempt to interpret the condition of man, is always a prominent feature of revolutions, wars, and other circumstances in which individuals are called upon to perform extraordinary action.

Why strain so hard to please someone else's society when you could create your own?

For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are. It is not important that those who ask the questions arrive at my answers or Marshall McLuhan's (quite different answers, by the way). This is an instance in which the asking of the questions is sufficient. To ask is to break the spell.

So I resort back to such ideology: we all have a calling. We all have an ultimate purpose. On that is laid before us by destiny or one that is positioned in the crosshairs of our long-term goals.