“I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“Seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, challenge them, and unless a justification… dismantle to increase the scope of human freedom.”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“How it is we have so much information, but know so little?”

Chapters: 21. Following Empty Heart

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“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”

Chapters: 39. Oneness

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“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”

Chapters: 17. True Leaders

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“Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves… because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.”

Chapters: 41. Distilled Life

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“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.”

Chapters: 74. The Great Executioner

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“It's only terrorism if they do it to us. When we do much worse to them, it's not terrorism.”

from Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Chapters: 31. Victory Funeral

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“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.”

from Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Chapters: 30. No War

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“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.”

from Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Chapters: 33. Know Yourself

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“The mass media [systematic propaganda] serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace… to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

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“entertainment has the merit not only of being better suited to helping sell goods; it is an effective vehicle for hidden ideological messages… the contemporary equivalent of the Roman ‘games of the circus’ that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that preserves the status quo inequality”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

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“The Pentagon and the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy is a subsidy at the taxpayers' expense, so that, in effect, the citizenry pays to be propagandized in the interest of powerful groups such as military contractors and other sponsors of state terrorism.”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

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“How it is we have so much information, but know so little?”

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“Sports are another example of the indoctrination system because it offers people something to pay attention to that's of no importance, that keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives, that might give them some idea of doing something about.”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

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“Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths, the driving force being individual material gain... a principle that will destroy itself in time by pretending that the world is an infinite garbage can.”

from Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

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“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state”

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“...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.”

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“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”

from Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

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“In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.”

from Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

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“Nationalism always has a way of oppressing others.”

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“What’s the point of being better than someone else?”

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“What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.”

from Class Warfare (1995)

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“[Language] must simply be a biological property of the human mind.”

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“This is almost the most dangerous period in human history.”

from Interview: The State of American Politics, 2023

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“Reagan was a vicious, brutal killer and a racist.”

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“Erich Fromm speaks with wisdom, compassion, learning and insight into the problems of individuals trapped in a social world that is needlessly cruel and hostile.”

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