Mass Control Quotes

Socialists have infiltrated our schools, our law courts, our government, our MEDIA OF COMMUNICATIONS. ... the Socialist movement is made up of a relatively small number of people who have developed the TECHNIQUE OF INFLUENCING large masses of people to a VERY HIGH DEGREE

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

New and old major powers face still yet another novel reality – in some respects, unprecedented. And it is that while the lethality, the lethality, of their power is greater than ever, their capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a historic low …. in earlier times, it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill one million people; today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people.

I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.

The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.

Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.

Today it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.

When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses believe almost anything you want, and guide them as you please.

All you have to do is anesthetize the masses by telling them they’re an elite, that they’ve got a mission, that they’re making history, that they’re fulfilling their destiny and fighting for a better world — and they swallow it like lambs — even when a guttersnipe says it.

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

Even if they're functioning out of ignorance, they are still participating and must be suppressed. In China, even one million people can be considered a small sum.

It could be Fascist, religious or political - it's always the same model that operates in these circumstances, and it's that which is the actuality of this film. Therefore, it's not specifically an explanation of German Fascism because that would be an impossible thing to do in any case.

As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, masses about central powerhouses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive men [i.e. governments], and the men who succumb to their own motive forces.

The great mass of humanity should never learn to read or write.

But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.

This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country´s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of W. Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by few.

As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.

Observe moderation [or: Keep balanced]. [Halt Mass!]

Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.

What we have in common is a mass men, a mass bureaucracy, and a manipulation of everyone to act smoothly, but with the illusion that he follows his own decisions and opinions.

Practically the whole human race is hypnotized because it thinks what somebody else told it to think.

Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom or the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power.

Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.