When there is propaganda, we are no longer able to evaluate certain questions, or even to discuss them Jacques Ellul More Quotes by Jacques Ellul More Quotes From 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 groups decision challenges People think that they have no right to judge a fact - all they have to do is to accept it. Thus from the moment that technics, the State, or production, are facts, we must worship them as facts, and we must try to adapt ourselves to them. This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact. Jacques Ellul race heart thinking 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 downgrading violence spiritual 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 rejection views mean The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. Jacques Ellul propaganda action ideas 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 politics political use I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history. Jacques Ellul exit men world 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 winning sports mean Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game. Jacques Ellul games exercise thinking Totalitarianism extends to whatever touches it...psychological technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves a psychological adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods, supervision of family life, and training family life for military or industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization. Everything is its concern. Technique, which is destroying all other civilizations, is more than a simple mechanism: it's a whole civilization in itself. Jacques Ellul army technology military If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, moral, and anti-democratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves. Jacques Ellul democracy mean people 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 prayer giving character 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 technology civilization order 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 technology technique rooms 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 technology technique use The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this link with one's neighbor. Jacques Ellul neighbor links spirit It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. Jacques Ellul media technique use 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 predictions technique men And an apprenticeship to whatever gadgetry is useful in a technical world Jacques Ellul apprenticeship world In point of fact there are a certain number of values and of forces which are of decisive importance in our world civilization: the primacy of production, the continual growth of the power of the State and the formation of the National State, the autonomous development of technics, etc. These, among others - far more than the ownership of the means of production or any totalitarian doctrine - are the constitutive elements of the modern world. So long as these elements continue to be taken for granted, the world is standing still. Jacques Ellul taken civilization mean
