John Henrik Clarke Quotes

[Visual images are] the surest way of conveying an idea. A leader or an interest can make itself master of current symbols to master the current situation.

Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.

Politics is the business of managing perceptions.

The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political...And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show him, every day, that there can be no change.

For better or worse, a lot of people's images are based on the first things that are written about them. You can't control what people write about you, so - good or bad - I have never lost sleep about it.

I'm interested in politics, what's going on in the world, how people behave and how your life is often in the hands of other people.

Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence.

What ends up happening is people form images and the image they form is, in some ways, what they want it to be. The idea of trying to correct the image is something I'm not interested in doing.

People are submissive to power, and few of them can be influenced by doctrines of righteousness.

Every human being has an assortment of diverse identities, and it greatly matters which one is triggered by social situations, which hold up different kinds of mirrors. The same is true for nations.

I'd be so fascinated to talk to a psychologist or sociologist about the deep psychological impact of seeing oneself represented. I don't think we've really touched the surface of what it does to the psyche of a people if the only image of you out there is negative. Or if it's never out there.

Media truly has the power to create and shift culture.

My image is the creation of media.

You often forget, because you're so inside it, that television has power.

From an early age, my father stressed the power of the image, and he encouraged me to carefully control my own. He advised me, for example, never to be photographed from below, an often unflattering angle for women.

Oceans of emotion can be transmitted through a text message, an emoji sequence, and a winking semicolon, but humans are hardwired to respond to visuals.

I've always found that you can control people better if you don't see too much of them.

When you see magazine articles and you go, 'Oh my God, that one looks so old or look how fat someone is' it has very little to do with the person in question and more to do with the person who's asking the question. People don't want to believe their own mortality.

You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of. A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.

What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue.

Politicians are propaganda, the people with guns are the enforcers and the media is the enthusiastic lapdog who enables the entire behavior and acts as the verbal abuser against those who deviate from nodding their heads at the vast statues of evil that we inherited.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

When someone else accepts you, that's when you begin to see yourself - through THEIR eyes - and you begin to realize that there may actually be many qualities to like about yourself.

Hopefully we'll get to a point where people realize movies don't cause violence. It just reflects the violence going on in the culture.

Isolation from power makes men look for a mob in which they can be strong.