A Quote by Geoffrey Hill

... one of the things the tyrant most cunningly engineers is the gross over-simplification of language, because propaganda requires that the minds of the collective respond primitively to slogans of incitement.

Geoffrey Hill

Quote Topics

Because Collective Engineers Gross Incitement Language Minds Most One Of The Things Over Propaganda Requires Respond Simplification Slogans Things Tyrant

Quote Author

Geoffrey Hill
English - Poet
June 18, 1932 - June 30, 2016

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

Georges Clemenceau

Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.

John Berger

Intellectuals ... regard over-simplification as the original sin of the mind and have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizations.

Aldous Huxley

Civil engineers build bridges. Electrical engineers, power grids. Software engineers, apps. From the engineers who created the Great Pyramids to the engineers who are designing and developing tomorrow's autonomous vehicles, these visionaries and their tangible creations are inextricably linked.

Dinesh Paliwal

It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.

Alex Carey

If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds.

John Bertram Phillips

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

I remember laughing when we made those slogans up [about abortion]. . . . We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical.

Bernard Nathanson

To say that the whole of the industrial experience of Europe and America just shows the rewards of exploiting the Third World is a gross simplification.

Amartya Sen

Simplification is one of the most difficult things to do.

Jonathan Ive

Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.

Arthur Koestler

Sometimes it appears that we're reaching a period when our senses and our minds will no longer respond to moderate stimulation. We seem to be approaching an Age of the Gross. Persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action.

Spiro T. Agnew

I think our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it's a very mysterious thing, isn't it? I think it's a response in our minds to perfection. It's too bad, people not realizing that their minds expand beyond this world.

Agnes Martin

Hypocrisy, false labels, can create slogans but no poems; propaganda but not life: there are no roots, there are no realities to nurture creative work.

Pablo Antonio Cuadra

Following the invention of writing, the special form of heightened language, characteristic of the oral tradition and a collective society, gave way to private writing. Records and messages displaced the collective memory. Poetry was written and detached from the collective festival.