Propaganda

"Highly intelligent people hate to admit they have fallen for such propaganda, and often get angry when it is suggested to them that they have."

"His (Hitler's) primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

"What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...The very men who most loudly proclaim their “materialism” and their contempt for “ideologues,” the Marxian communists, place their entire hope on what? On the formation by propaganda of a class-conscious group. But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?"

"Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct a propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or desirable. ...It is often very illuminating, therefore, to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion? Was it the man who told you, or the man who told him, or someone still further removed? And how much was he permitted to see?"

"Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable."

"Propaganda is defined as the manipulation of the public to the end of securing some specific action."

"Its aim is to “put something over” on people, with or without their knowledge or consent… neither truth nor the basic values of civilization get a fair hearing."

"Prejudice and the well-known weaknesses of human nature are to be exploited and thus encouraged."

"So long as the public may be manipulated by misrepresentation and by appeal to ignorance and prejudice, it is the public’s own fault if the “knowing ones” make use of questionable methods."

"The evil effect of these attempts to manipulate the multitude by pampering its weaknesses — in return for material and other advantages to persons and for ends not disclosed — is clearly seen in various aspects of our common life. In politics such effect have long been deplorable."

"It is the trivial, the irrelevant, the sensational, the appeal to obsolete bigotry which naturally give it greatest publicity. In such publicity it becomes a mere vulgar caricature of itself."

"One of the serious results of propaganda is that it has caused the public to think that education and propaganda are the same thing, and thus to make an ignorant multitude believe it is being educated when it is only being manipulated. Education aims at independence of judgement. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd."

"The educator aims at a slow process of development; the propagandist, at quick results. The educator tries to tell people how to think; the propagandist, what to think. The educator strives to develop individual responsibility; the propagandist, mass effects. The educator wants thinking; the propagandist, action. The educator fails unless he achieves an open mind; the propagandist, unless he achieves a closed mind."

"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production."

"Und was ist Wahrheit? Dass das Universum im Urknall entstanden ist? ... Letztlich ist das nichts als Marketing."

"kunst ist propaganda für die wirklichkeit und wird daher verboten!"

"Die Partei benutzt die Lügen bis zum letzten Atemzuge als Schutzmittel. Damit schüchtert sie die politischen Gegner ein und reicht ihren Parteigenossen Beruhigungspillen. Es ist ja so unglaublich einfach, dieses Deutsche Volk am laufenden Bande zu belügen und am Narrenseil herumzuführen."

"Die größten Triumphe der Propaganda wurden nicht durch Handeln, sondern durch Unterlassung erreicht. Groß ist die Wahrheit, größer aber, vom praktischen Gesichtspunkt, ist das Verschweigen von Wahrheit."

"Die Aufnahmefähigkeit der großen Masse ist nur sehr beschränkt, das Verständnis klein, dafür jedoch die Vergesslichkeit groß. Aus diesen Tatsachen heraus hat sich jede wirkungsvolle Propaganda auf nur sehr wenige Punkte zu beschränken und diese schlagwortartig so lange zu verwenden, bis auch bestimmt der Letzte unter einem solchen Worte das Gewollte sich vorzustellen vermag. Sowie man diesen Grundsatz opfert und vielseitig werden will, wird man die Wirkung zum Zerflattern bringen, da die Menge den gebotenen Stoff weder zu verdauen noch zu behalten vermag."

"Das Wesen der Propaganda ist deshalb unentwegt die Einfachheit und die Wiederholung. Nur wer die Probleme auf die einfachste Formel bringen kann und den Mut hat, sie auch gegen die Einsprüche der Intellektuellen ewig in dieser vereinfachten Form zu wiederholen, der wird auf die Dauer zu grundlegenden Erfolgen in der Beeinflussung der öffentlichen Meinung kommen."

"Am Anfang war das Wort und nicht das Geschwätz, und am Ende wird nicht die Propaganda sein, sondern wieder das Wort."

""Adolf Hitler sieht bis an sein Lebensende mit tiefem Respekt"