I. F. Stone Quotes

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.

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

Self-deception ultimately explains Japan's plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest - and not merely a response to U.S. criticism.

Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way.

Dissidents can't be dissidents forever; we are dissidents because we don't want to be dissidents.

One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

Radicals can be found in any environment.

Sometimes, America, when something's too bad, we don't want to look at it. We want to turn our head.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

There is the natural tendency that all of us are vulnerable to, to deny unpleasant realities and to look for any excuse to push them away and resolve to think about them another day long in the future.

I'll close my eyes really, really tight and make you all go away.

Ready for the revolution!

I fight against Fascism; that is my trade.

Even intelligent people succumb to their own propaganda.

An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other

We don’t like to face unpleasant reality. We want our leaders to tell us what we want to hear …. You cannot manipulate reality. Reality will real its ugly head

How you can win the population for war: At first, the statesman will invent cheap lying, that impute the guilt of the attacked nation, and each person will be happy over this deceit, that calm the conscience. It will study it detailed and refuse to test arguments of the other opinion. So he will convince step for step even therefrom that the war is just and thank God, that he, after this process of grotesque even deceit, can sleep better

In the struggle for power, propaganda is an instrument to be used by those who want to secure or retain power just as much as it is by those wanting to displace them.

We tend to believe our own propaganda a little too completely.

A democracy doesn’t use force to control its citizens; it uses propaganda instead.

Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.

While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.

Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.