Erich Fromm Quotes

Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.

It seems to be universally the case that, if one’s enemy does not commit atrocities, one has to invent them for him in order to hate him as he requires to be hated.

The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one. The greater the lie, the greater chance that it will be believed. All epoch-making events have been produced not by the written, but the spoken word.

If you start studying history closer, you'll find that most all wars are based on false flag operations to get people - to convince the people that they're under attack in some way so that they will support the wars.

The tactic of leading people into... a war that doesn't make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't intimidate me.

Everyone, when there's war in the air, learns to live in a new element: falsehood.

It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda.

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.

In World War II, neither side reported its own atrocities… both sides emphasized atrocities committed by the enemy

The only real diplomacy ever performed by a diplomat is in deceiving their own people after their dumbness has got them into a war.

The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.

The appalling thing about war is that it kills all love of truth.

I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters, but victory.

Hitler understood the demagogues' essential principle to teach or persuade is far more difficult than to stir emotion.

Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.

I remember the Korean War very well. And I remember the soldiers who were POWs who supposedly were "brainwashed," quote, unquote, who gave in, so to speak. And when they came back, they were treated like pariahs and traitors.

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.

Facts are now coming to light that show Muslims were not responsible for 9/11. A policy came out of the Pentagon to make war and to pit the Muslims against each other and rip up these "cells of terror."

It is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and '60s style of propaganda.

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.

The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.

The Russian Bolsheviks have discovered that truth does not matter so long as there is reiteration. They have no difficulty whatever in countering a fact by a lie which, if repeated often enough and loudly enough, becomes accepted by the people.

Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot." [Hosting the Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence at the New York Waldorf-Astoria, June 6, 2006]

If you help manufacture an enemy that's really evil, you can point to the fact that it's really evil, and say, "Hey, it's really evil."

No, it was honest," said Harry. "One of the only honest things you've said to me. You don't care whether I live or die, but you do care that I help you convince everyone you're winning the war against Voldemort.