Psychological Warfare Quotes

We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

A man's greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.

The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.

If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know. The correspondents don't write and the censorship wouldn't pass the truth. What they do send is not the war, but just a pretty picture of the war with everybody doing gallant deeds. The thing is horrible and beyond human nature to bear and I feel I can't go on with this bloody business.

These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners.

Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas... I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes... It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose.

We had won many pacific islands where the Japanese fought to the death rather than surrender …. We had killed 100,000 people in Tokyo in a single night. It destroyed the city but as far as we could tell it had no effect on their morale. We had to shock the Japanese into surrender.

If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue peace ... Don't ever defend. Always attack.

People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.

I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.

I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology.... Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated.

[In counterinsurgency] a soldier must be prepared to become a propagandist, a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout.

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power.

It is fine that General MacArthur is arrogant and stubborn. An arrogant and stubborn enemy is easier to defeat.

The fourth rule is: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

Thus the jihad may be regarded as Islam’s instrument for carrying out its ultimate objective by turning all people into believers …. The universality of Islam, in its all embracing creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political if not strictly military.

The thing with sledging is it very rarely goes well. Usually, if I was sledging, I was struggling.

How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess. I try to stay in games where I have an edge.