Discourse

"[In] democratic societies … the state can't control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it's much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think. … One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there's a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. Namely, you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, then you can have a debate."

"For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the propaganda system to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling or unwitting instruments."

"One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system--and they believe what the system expects them to believe. By and large, they're part of the privileged elite, and share the interests and perceptions of those in power."

"The success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century."

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

"Goebbels ... was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me."

"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest."

"Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government."

"No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders."

"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits."

"Propaganda is a monologue that is not looking for an answer, but an echo."

"Manipulations of opinion, insofar as they are inspired by well-defined interests, have limited goals; their effect, however, if they happen to touch upon an issue of authentic concern, is no longer subject to their control and may easily produce consequences they never foresaw or intended."

"Sir Humphrey: Plays praising the government."

"Jim Hacker: What are the most boring?"

"Sir Humphrey: Plays criticising the government make the second most boring evenings ever invented."

"We are told, that in Turkey, when any Man is the Author of Notorious Falsehoods, it is usual to blacken the whole Front of his House. Nay we have sometimes heard, that an Embassador, whose Business it is (if I may quote his Character in Sir Henry Wotton's Words) to lie for the Good of his Country, has sometimes had this Mark set upon his House; when he been detected in any Piece of feign'd Intelligence, that has prejudiced the Government, and misled the Minds of the People. One could almost wish that the Habitations of such of our own Countrymen as deal in Forgeries detrimental to the Public, were distinguished in the same Manner; that their Fellow-Subjects might be cautioned not to be too easy in giving Credit to them. Were such a Method put in Practice, this Metropolis would be strangely checquered; some entire Parishes would be in Mourning, and several Streets darkened from one End to the other."

"Forgetting that their pride of spirit, Their exultation in their trial, Detracts most largely from the merit Of all their boasted self-denial."

"To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess that these honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told: whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast."

"As long as the boasters haven't departed, their mouths make me uneasy."

"To those who are given to virtue, the boast of titles is wholly alien and distasteful."

"If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness."

"A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never having fallen out of one."

"Αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ Ῥόδος καὶ πήδημα."

"Don't holla till you are out of the wood. This is a night for praying rather than boasting."

"Enten, you should not boast about your superior strength after you have explained the grounds for your boasting. […] Don't speak with a gaping mouth of your superior strength -- I will make known its shape and essence."

"Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strengthor the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight."

"The rhetorical process functioned in many areas other than speech: Curtius wrote about 'rhetorical landscape representations' while Serpieris speaks of 'la retorica al teatro' (the rhetorical use of theatrical space), and music historians have learned that the language and approach of musical theory in the Middle Ages were borrowed directly from medieval grammar and rhetoric."

"Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill."

"Rhetoric in its truest sense seeks to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves, links in that chain extending up toward the ideal."

"Since we want not emancipation from impulse but clarification of impulse, the duty of rhetoric is to bring together action and understanding into a whole that is greater than scientific perception."

"Rhetoric, I shall urge, should be a study of misunderstanding and its remedies."

"Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong … And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe."

"The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern."

"What do you believe was on the mind of the ancient Romans that they called the arts of speaking humanity? They judged that, indisputably, by the study of these disciplines not only was the tongue refined, but also the wildness and barbarity of people’s minds was amended."

"Academic writing excuses itself from rhetorical care in the selfless service of some precise truth—and then deforms our only means for speaking truth."

"“Rhetoric like this has consequences,” said Timothy J. Heaphy, the lead investigator for the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House after his presidency. “People who we interviewed for the Jan. 6 investigation said they came to the Capitol because politicians and the president told them to be there. Politicians think that when they say things it’s just rhetoric, but people listen to it and take it seriously. In this climate politicians need to realize this and be more responsible.”"

"Plato sees true rhetoric as psychology which can fulfill its truly “moving” function only if it masters original images [eide]. Thus the true philosophy is rhetoric, and the true rhetoric is philosophy, a philosophy which does not need an “external” rhetoric to convince, and a rhetoric that does not need an “external” content of verity."

"It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other."

"Delivery, delivery, delivery."

"For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope; And when he happen'd to break off I' th' middle of his speech, or cough, H' had hard words,ready to show why, And tell what rules he did it by; Else, when with greatest art he spoke, You'd think he talk'd like other folk, For all a rhetorician's rules Teach nothing but to name his tools."

"An entire generation is experiencing a crisis of free speech, of authenticity, and of honesty to oneself and one’s values. For every member of... that 62 percent of young people self-censoring, for every constructive debate that never happens, for every brilliant idea that never gets voiced, it amounts to a true tragedy. Generation Z deserves permission to engage with controversial topics and to lean into ambiguity. The realm of discomfort is where growth and discovery occur. As we come of age, we need the freedom to fumble, and the reasonable expectation of grace and forgiveness when we do. Unless our society abandons its censorious tendencies, it will yield a generation unable to speak freely, to take risks, or even just to be authentic."

"For in the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Gresham's law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate."

"I never knew any debatable point not maintained on both sides by unanswerable arguments..."

"Ignorantia non est argumentum."

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

"[In] democratic societies … the state can't control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it's much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think. … One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there's a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. Namely, you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, then you can have a debate."

"Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it."

"[There exists a] profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."