Martin Scorsese Quotes

In the first World War British propaganda had to invent the stories of German soldiers bayoneting Belgian babies, because there were too few real atrocities to feed the hatred against the enemy.

Food is as important to armies as ammunition—but more important than either is an unfailing supply of lies. You simply cannot murder your enemy in the most efficient manner if you know he is in every essential the same kind of a man as yourself.

For every one of my Black soldiers who may be murdered by their captors, two Rebel soldiers shall hang.

In time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda.

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

The public is easily amenable to lies: the more lies there are, the greater the support for war. For instance, when the public was told that Saddam Hussein would attack the U.S., this increased support for the war.

It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours.

You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,You take the human being and you twist it all aboutSo scrub my skin with womenChain my tongue with whiskyStuff my nose with garlicCoat my eyes with butterFill my ears with silverStick my legs in plasterTell me lies about Vietnam.

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.

When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying 'I don't want to die.' That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses All bent upon killing, because their "of courses" Are not quite the same.

George Bush is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4000 young American soldiers who have died in the Iraqi war.

I see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.

When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears, they are faint from want of food.

The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers.

I think they clearly do not fit within the prescriptions of the Geneva Convention. It's hard for me to see how members of al Qaeda could be considered prisoners of war.

Every single war that you see go down is illegal. They're breaking the Geneva Convention, and they're breakin' all kinds of sh*t they ain't supposed to be. All these soldiers that's dyin', every talkin' about, "Support our troops, support our troops," yeah we support our troops, but what are they fightin' for? Let's support 'em for the right reason. Let's tell our troops the truth, and maybe they wouldn't be out there fightin' these wars, because there are a lot of these troops that don't even wanna be out there if you talk to them.

We've seen the reality of Saddam's regime: his thugs prepared to kill their own people, the parading of prisoners of war and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers.

By 1973, John Kerry had already accused American soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam, thrown someone else's medals to the ground in an anti-war demonstration, and married his first heiress.

Two increasing themes which appear to dominate our listening, reading and watching lives are propaganda and 'national security', or manufactured war.

You don't have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them. The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda. (On the Spanish Civil War, 1937)

I would like to speak in terms of praise due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the war.

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.

The media, itself an arm of mega-corporate power, feeds the fear industry, so that people are primed like pumps to support wars on rumor, innuendo, legends, and lies.

When the war started, religion and superstition (whatever the difference is) permeated the lives of ordinary soldiers, who lived in a thought world not too far removed from the seventeenth century.