Jacques Ellul Quotes

Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief

No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.

When God picks out a man and speaks to him, it is to engage him in a work, an action. Nowhere in Scripture do we find indeterminate or purely mystical vocation.

Propaganda tries first of all to create conditioned reflexes in the individual so that certain words, signs, or symbols, even certain persons or facts, provoke unfailing reactions...The important thing is that when the time is ripe, the individual can be thrown into action by the utilization of the psychological levers that have been set up.

The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.

If the ruler wants to play the game by himself and follow secret policies, he must present a decoy to the masses. He cannot escape the mass; but he can draw between himself and that mass an invisible curtain, a screen, on which the mass will see projected the mirage of some politics, while the real politics are being made behind it.

Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.

Technique has taken over the whole of civilization.

Death, procreation, birth all submit to technical efficiency and systemization.

Education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself;

it has only one goal, to create technicians.

(Propaganda) proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes - The two great routes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflex and the myth

It is the multiplication of men who are exluded from working which provokes war.

We ought at least to bear this in mind when we boast of the continual decrease in human participation in technical operations.

Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.

Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.

The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal - the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing...There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in a sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or radio program there.

There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. That act is giving.

Thinking has become a superfluous exercise.

.. purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.

No one knows where we are going, the aim of life has been forgotten, the end has been left behind. Man has set out at tremendous speed- to go nowhere.

All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis.

Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.

This is where each individual must decide for himself.

The essential thing is the decision to challenge the modern state, which without this small group of protesters will be checked by neither brake, value, nor reason.

To the ideal of high consumption and the downgrading of spiritual values corresponds a conception of injustice that centers exclusively on the problem of consumption; and equality in consumption cannot be achieved except by violence.

Propaganda's content increasingly resembles information.

It has even clearly been proved that a violent, excessive, shock-provoking propaganda texts leads ultimately to less conviction and participation. The listeners critical powers decrease if the propaganda message is more rational and less violent.

The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself.

There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it.

I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence.

It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence. The whole structure of society implies it, of necessity. The more we mobilize the forces of nature, the more must we mobilize men and the more do we require order.

One thing, however, is sure: unless Christians fulfill their prophetic role, unless they become the advocates and defenders of the truly poor, witness to their misery, then, infallibly, violence will suddenly break out. In one way or another 'their blood cries to heaven,' and violence will seem the only way out. It will be too late to try to calm them and create harmony.

Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity.

Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.

The individual, by means of the discipline imposed on him by sport, not only plays and finds relaxation from the various compulsions to which he is subjected, but without knowing it trains himself for new compulsions. ... Training in sports makes of the individual an efficient piece of apparatus which is henceforth unacquainted with anything but the harsh joys of exploiting his body and winning.

Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.

The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.

The machine is a tool. But it is not a neutral tool. We are deeply influenced by the machine while using it.

And an apprenticeship to whatever gadgetry is useful in a technical world

Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one technique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions and objectives in short, all the technical laws and customs which he encounters in office or factory.

Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda - not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all others, but at least a partial one: Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.

Again I want to emphasize that the study of propaganda must be conducted within the context of a technological society. Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world.

It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.

When there is propaganda, we are no longer able to evaluate certain questions, or even to discuss them

Fate operates when people give up

I can very well say without hesitation that all those who have political power, even if they use it well have acquired it by demonic mediation and even if they are not conscious of it, they are worshippers of diabolos.

Am I a pessimist? Not at all. I am convinced that the history of the human race, no matter how tragic, will ultimately lead to the Kingdom of God. I am convinced that all the works of humankind will be reintegrated in the work of God, and that each of us, no matter how sinful, will ultimately be saved.

I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.

No technique is possible when men are free.

Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being.

Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means;

in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.

Because of the myth of progress, it is much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight-edged one.

Human life as a whole is not inundated by technique.

It has room for activities that are not rationally or systematically ordered. But the collision between spontaneous activities and technique is catastrophic for the spontaneous activities.

Journalistic content is a technical complex expressly intended to adapt man to the machine.

Everyone has been taught that technique is an application of science.

... This traditional view is radically false. It takes into account only a single category of science and only a short period of time