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  "title": "Propaganda",
  "slug": "propaganda",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacques-ellul/propaganda",
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  "author": {
    "name": "Jacques Ellul",
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      "slug": "the-most-favorable",
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      "text": "The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.",
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      "text": "In the midst of increasing mechanization and technological organization, propaganda is simply the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to persuade man to submit with good grace. When man will be fully adapted to this technological society, when he will end by obeying with enthusiasm, convinced of the excellence of what he is forced to do, the constraint of the organization will no longer be felt by him; the truth is, it will no longer be a constraint, and the police will have nothing to do. The civic and technological good will and the enthusiasm for the right social myths — both created by propaganda — will finally have solved the problem of man.",
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      "slug": "propaganda-does-not",
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      "text": "Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.",
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      "page": 38,
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      "slug": "hate-hunger-and",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacques-ellul/propaganda/hate-hunger-and",
      "text": "Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.",
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      "slug": "having-analyzed-these",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "slug": "people-used-to-think",
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      "text": "People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress; they still celebrate the decline of illiteracy as a great victory; they condemn countries with a large proportion of illiterates; they think that reading is a road to freedom. All this is debatable, for the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. Outside of that, reading has no meaning (and even destroys certain automatic qualities of memory and observation). But to talk about critical faculties and discernment is to talk about something far above primary education and to consider a very small minority. The vast majority of people, perhaps ninety percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word, or, conversely, reject it altogether. As these people do not possess enough knowledge to reflect and discern, they believe — or disbelieve — in toto what they read. And as such people, moreover, will select the easiest, not the hardest, reading matter, they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition. They are perfectly adapted to propaganda.",
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      "slug": "because-of-the",
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      "text": "...because of the myth of progress, it is much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight-edged one.",
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      "text": "The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.",
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      "text": "Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.",
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