Chuck D Quotes

The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.

Once ignorance is weaponized, violence seems to be a tragic inevitability.

Extremism thrives amid ignorance and anger, intimidation and cowardice.

Here's your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute -- often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is.

The people wish to be deceived; let them be deceived.

... a trick speech, calculated to lead the American people into war and ruin.

It is from the pride and ambition of rulers and the ignorance of the people that wars arise.

A national campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism [the convention] and a couple of hangings thrown in. It is better, even, than war.

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

The line between science and magic becomes blurred so that public judgments on technical issues can be erratic or badly flawed. It frequently appears that some people will believe almost anything. Thus judgments can be manipulated or warped by unscrupulous groups. Distortions or outright falsehoods can come to be accepted as fact.

It takes a certain political initiative to make people kill one another.

Every government explains its existence, and justifies its deeds of violence, by the argument that if it did not exist the condition of things would be very much worse. After assuring the people of its danger the government subordinates it to control, and when in this condition compels it to attack some other nation. And thus the assurance of the government is corroborated in the eyes of the people, as to the danger of attack from other nations.

There is a cost to ignorance and the hate.

False stories can be promulgated more easily when the people trying to tell true stories have been discredited - or when they are battered by rubber bullets.

Yes, it is frustrating to listen to those who foment fear, suspicion and intolerance, who don't know the mistakes of history, and are in the midst of repeating them. Have faith that the character of the American people as a whole is such that, in the end, we will choose not to drink this brand of soiled milk.

We are in the middle of a big swamp of ignorance that is taught by a lot of nonsense, propaganda, absurdity, amalgams. I have a hard time listening to any speech. You feel like you want to stop the TV every two seconds to rephrase them, because it's lie after lie, turning stuff upside down, and you can't follow that. That's the trap.

At no time did I suggest that violence is justice, and I can't believe I even have to explain that. But the alternative is letting someone like Kayleigh McEnany misquote and manipulate what you say. McEnany, who repeatedly lies to the American people.

In my humble opinion, propaganda is one of the most evil tools humans have used against humans throughout history to justify wars, justify atrocities, justify evil. ISIS has taken it to a new extreme.

All the racial slurs I done heard. All the things I heard about my mom, and my basketball game and my kids, all this. It felt good to punch a fan one time.

I won't hesitate to detonate, I'm short fused.

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

Reason and truth have rarely prevailed against demagoguery when the audience is too ignorant to tell the difference.

As far as the Council is concerned, the U.S. Wardens are a bunch of mushrooms." "Eh?" "Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.