Milos Forman Quotes

We must form men so that they can only will what we wish them to will.

We have a free society, and the totalitarian states are dungeons. We have totally different methods of population control…. We can’t control people so we have to control what they think.

Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind.

who are the brain police?

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

Let's find out what everyone is doing, And then stop everyone from doing it.

I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.

We're led to believe everybody opposes it and disagrees with political correctness, but yet everybody's scared to death of it. So who is it? Well, it's the power structure wherever you happen to be.

It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

Society and the system and politicians don't want people to be aware of things. They want people to believe what they have to show 'em.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

[…] the underlying problem is the soft progressive totalitarianism that seeks to compel submission to its creed. A powerful cultural establishment, now reinforced by political dominion in Washington, won’t tolerate deviance. Instead of learning to live at peace with the reality of pluralism, the essence of a successful democracy, it demands concordance with all of its ever-changing strictures. It ascribes dissent not to honest disagreement, differing experiences, diverse intellectual traditions or the basic human instinct for autonomy, but to malice and ignorance.

The forces that run the world always try to keep things under control. The population might be having a wonderful time, buying iPods and going to nice restaurants, but I still feel they're all kind of under control.

They say you better listen to the voice of reason But they don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason. So you had better do as you are told. You better listen to the radio.

As smart technologies become more intrusive, they risk undermining our autonomy by suppressing behaviors that someone somewhere has deemed undesirable.

China's censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

Gotta watch out for directors.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?

You can't always let people do their own thing.

Big Brother doesn't like all these Little Brothers looking at it.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.