Spike Lee Quotes

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.

Ever since Gutenberg, every dynasty, every political leader, every major religion, has recognized that to control the media is to have a powerful instrument for controlling the values and behavior of a population.

The primary purpose of the media is to mobilize support for the controlling interests.

The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen, and the far spread magazine, rules the country.

It's a big culture of mind control too, MK-Ultra mind control rules in Hollywood. If you don't know that, google it and look into it. It's really hard for artists to find their voice in the media. It's levels of brainwashing and mind control.

Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.

There's no denying that television is one of the most powerful propaganda media we've ever invented.

The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.

The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.

With the instrument of radio you can make public opinion. Perhaps even conquer a country.

History must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier conflicts over the future of the nation.

The term “public diplomacy” is often a euphemism for propaganda.

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion.

Newspapers form public opinion, but public opinion also influences newspapers. The general masses are not like horses that can be tamed and trained to do their masters bidding.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment.

The White House expansion to control the entire corpus of the News was the direct result of television.

Osama bin Laden is a better propagandist than Karen Hughes …. It is not enough to win a war on the ground any more. You have to win the battle of perceptions.

Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev, the editors of Pravda, Izvestiia, the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn't called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.

We are going to have to endure an imperial media with a government by public opinion poll.

There are no civilians in 21st-century warfare because the hottest battlefield is the public mind. The front runs between your ears, between your neighbor’s, between mine. The enemy’s objective (and the enemies are numerous) is to capture our thoughts and convictions. Belief is an immensely potent prize.

The media is so powerful.