Randal Marlin Quotes

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle philosophers have had an interest in taking note of common fallacies in reasoning.

When we consider propaganda as the attempt to shape the thoughts and feelings of others, in ways conforming to the aims of the communicator, we find a vast array of different examples throughout history.

We live in a time when complex ethical questions are easily subordinated to the demands of efficiency, profit maximization, and maintenance or furthering of political power.

Party politics in modern democratic society means pandering to a wide variety of different groups and sympathizing with their often quite base motives, such as revenge, power, booty, and spoils, to maintain the necessary level of support.

The specific media may change, but the principles of human nature have remained fairly constant over the millenia.

There are many other ways in which language can be used to manipulate an audience. one obvious way is to simply lie.

It is true that advertising often gives information and is valuable for doing so, but some forms of advertising give precious little information, and even that little is wrong.

Aristotle writes that persuasion is based on three things: the ethos, or personal character of the speaker; the pathos, or getting the audience into the right kind of emotional receptivity; and the logos, or the argument itself, carried out by abbreviated syllogisms, or something like deductive syllogisms, and by the use of example.

When we look for propaganda, we have the obvious job of asking what messages are being propagated.

When you give false information you tend to restrict the freedom of choice to others.

Anyone familiar with the marvels of the Worldwide Web can hardly fail to see that we have entered a new era in communications on a scale perhaps comparable to the invention of the Gutenberg press.

The best goal for propaganda analysis is to develop such an understanding of the phenomenon that it will no longer be profitable for people to engage in it.

In a general way, a major goal of the propagandist is to seek some kind of authoritative backing for the belief he or she is propagating.

The special harm attaching to prior restraint is that the government can keep materials from reaching the public, so there can be no accountability, no judgment by the people that the power to suppress was wrongly exercised.

Exposure as a propagandist is fatal to the would-be persuader.

There is arguably something wrong with a method of persuasion that cannot pass the test of publicity.

Small town people assume you are a friend if you simply remember their names.

Any restrictions to freedom of expression will always open the door to possible others, because analogical reasoning can mount arguments showing why this or that class of objects is closely similar to those for which exceptions have been made.

If war is glorified, it tends to eclipse the policies it is meant to serve.

Propaganda analysis can contribute to world peace by exposing those techniques that lead to armed conflict by creating misapprehension of reality.

The liar wants to be believed, but lying undermines the foundation for credibility.

There are many special interests skilful at manipulating circumstances and communications in such a way as to benefit their own ends and not necessarily the public good.

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, an alert citizenry today should take the trouble to learn how easy it can be for a powerful minority to manipulate information to win the support-or the indifference-of the majority towards an action.

In modern times sound policy-making must often come to grips with numbers.

Once we recognize the power of propaganda, we need to ask whether its exercise is consistent with those democratic ideals to which lip-service is commonly accorded.

Down to the present day the luminous image of democracy has often served as a pretext for the most undemocratic actions.