Irvine Welsh Quotes

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

Our politicians want to keep us in a negative state because they can easily manipulate us.

For manipulation to be most effective, evidence of its presence should be nonexistent... It is essential, therefore, that people who are manipulated believe in the neutrality of their key social institutions.

They'll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this f**kin' place. It's a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people: white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on.

George Orwell was right. There's no greater genius as far as I'm concerned in terms of understanding human nature. I think that a lot of people just believe anything you tell them, and no matter what it is, they just go along with the program. They're perfectly happy to take their pill every day and do what they're told, and work and buy things, and work and buy things, and stay out of any complex emotional situations. And whatever the authorities tell them to do, they do, and whatever the authorities say is the truth, they believe is the truth.

States have always needed intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable

I believe in love. I think it just hits you and pulls the rug out from underneath you and, like a baby, demands your attention every minute of the day.

Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind.

Dogma is a lie reiterated and authoritatively injected into the mind of one or more persons who believe that they believe what someone else believes.

We want to believe we couldn't be replaced, and that the people we love are irreplaceable.

Without communism ... our state lacks a Wizard of Oz to terrify all the people all the time. So the state looks inward, at the true enemy, who turns out to be - who else? the people of the United States.

I don't ask what Alex sees in him because I'm afraid my disapproval will make her latch on to him even more. That's how it works. I'll have to pretend he doesn't bother me and that I don't want to drown him in the bay.

War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press

I don't believe in soul mates, not exactly. I think it's ridiculous to think there's only one person out there for us. What if your 'soul mate' lives in Zimbabwe? What if he dies young? I also think 'two souls becoming one' is ridiculous. You need to hold on to yourself. But I do believe in souls being in sync, souls that mirror each other.

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?

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

The sad truth about humanity...is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.

Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us.

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.

who are the brain police?

I just don't believe in love at first sight any more, even though I've based my whole career on the concept.

We are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

I would rather you love me, but if not love, fear will do.

Neutrality and boredom are the weapons of the state.

He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.