73+ Jacques Ellul Quotes On Technology, Communication And Society

Jacques Ellul was a French philosopher, sociologist, lay theologian, and professor who wrote on the subject of technology and its effects on society. He is best known for his book The Technological Society, which looks at the ways in which technology has changed the way we live and think. Ellul argued that technology has become a form of domination, and that it is leading us to a state of total control by the state and corporations. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jacques Ellul on technology, communication, society.

Top 10 Jacques Ellul Quotes

1. 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.
2. Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement.
3. The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.
7. Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.
8. Technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Death, procreation, birth all submit to technical efficiency and systemization.
9. Education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians.
10. Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.

Jacques Ellul Short Quotes

• Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.
• The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself.
• Journalistic content is a technical complex expressly intended to adapt man to the machine.
• Propaganda begins when dialogue ends.
• The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.
• And an apprenticeship to whatever gadgetry is useful in a technical world
• Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of creation. It makes history possible.
• God is not an encyclopedia whose task is to satisfy our curiosity.
• Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.
• Fate operates when people give up

Jacques Ellul Quotes About Technology

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. — Jacques Ellul

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

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. — Jacques Ellul

The qualities which technique requires for its advance are precisely those characteristics of a technical order which do not represent indivisual intelligence...The individual, in order to make use of technical instruments, no longer needs to know about his civilization. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

What we are witnessing at the moment is a rearrangement of the world in an intermediate stage; the change is not in the use of a natural force but in the application of technique to all spheres of life. — Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

(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 — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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

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. — Jacques Ellul

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. — Jacques Ellul

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

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 — Jacques Ellul

For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived. — Jacques Ellul

There is a limited elite that understands the secrets of their own techniques, but not necessarily of all techniques. These men are close to the seat of modern governmental power. The state is no longer founded on the 'average citizen', but on the ability and knowledge of this elite. The average man is altogether unable to penetrate technical secrets or governmental organization and consequently can exert no influence at all on the state. — Jacques Ellul

Almost always, it is the conviction that 'I am right' or 'my cause is the cause of justice' that triggers violence. That is, ...the moment propaganda does its work, violence is unleashed. And violence can be reduced by countering this propaganda. — Jacques Ellul

True technique will know how to maintain the illusion of liberty, choice, and individuality; but these will have been carefully calculated so that they will be integrated into the mathematical reality merely as appearances! — Jacques Ellul

Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it. — Jacques Ellul

We have to admit that there is an immeasurable distance between all that we read in the Bible and the practice of the Church and of Christians. — Jacques Ellul

In reality this is the very reverse of what we are told about the biblical God, who opens up freedom for us, who lets us make our own history, who goes with us on the more or less unheard-of adventures that we concoct. — Jacques Ellul

God is always present, always available. At whatever moment in which one turns to him the prayer is received, is heard, is authenticated, for it is God who gives our prayer its value and its character, not our interior dispositions, not our fervor, not our lucidity. The prayer which is pronounced for God and accepted by him becomes, by that very fact, a true prayer. — Jacques Ellul

The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and we must so act that it cannot take place. — Jacques Ellul

Salvation is universal because the love of God encompasses all. If God is God and if God is love, nothing is outside the love of God. A place like hell is thus inconceivable. — Jacques Ellul

Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on the razor's edge. — Jacques Ellul

The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation. — Jacques Ellul

Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers, we’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world. — Jacques Ellul

Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society , from politics , from history , for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt , which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances. — Jacques Ellul

The person who imagined that he could not be the victim of propaganda because he could distinguish truth from falsehood, is extremely susceptible to propaganda, because when propaganda does tell the truth, he is then convinced that it is no longer propaganda: moreover, his self-confidence makes him all the more vulnerable to attacks of which he is unaware. — Jacques Ellul

Technical civilization has made a great error in not suppressing death, the only human reality still intact — Jacques Ellul

For in a civilization which has lost the meaning of life, the most important thing a Christian can do is to live, and life, understood from the point of view of faith, has an extraordinary explosive force. — Jacques Ellul

The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective. — Jacques Ellul

Life Lessons by Jacques Ellul

1. Jacques Ellul believed that technology and modernity had a profound effect on society, and that people should be aware of the implications of technology and its effects on their lives.
2. He argued that technology had a tendency to shape and control people's lives, and that individuals should strive to be aware of the power of technology and its potential to manipulate.
3. He also argued that people should take responsibility for their own lives and strive to be independent from the power of technology.