Sri Aurobindo Quotes

The art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency.

A newspaper is always a weapon in somebody's hands.

The public don't know what they want; it's my job to tell them.

Everything is designed to help you sell out.

Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.

Commercials capture your attention, that's all.

Everybody is promoting something.

Those who tell us to be in touch with our own desires are often merely trying to make us believe that what we want is the thing that they are selling. […] We're used to that kind of persuasion, for political candidates as well as commercial products.

Madison Avenue makes us addicts of consumerism, using glass wampum to steal our capacity to direct our own lives.

It is so obvious that we are constantly monitored and manipulated both in advertising and in politics.

All our advertising is propaganda, of course, but it has become so much a part of our life, is so pervasive, that we just don't know what it is propaganda for.

What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.

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.

I'm vile and perverted. I'm obsessed and deranged. I've existed for years but very little has changed. I'm the tool of the government and industry too. For I'm destined to rule and regulate you. You may think I'm pernicious, but you can't look away. I'll make you think I'm delicious with the stuff that I say. I'm the best you can get... have you guessed me yet? I'm the slime oozing out of your TV set.

Ads push the principle of noise all the way to the plateau of persuasion. They are quite in accord with the procedures of brainwashing.

The advertising industry is one of our most basic forms of communication and, allegedly, of information. Yet, obviously, much of this ostensible information is not purveyed to inform but to manipulate and to achieve a result - to make somebody think he needs something that very possibly he doesn't need, or to make him think one version of something is better than another version when the ground for such a belief really doesn't exist.

I'm manipulating the audience. I'm making sure people sympathize.

When it comes to controlling human beings, there is no better instrument than lies. Because you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

Politics is gut; commercials are gut.

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

Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.

The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment.

Everyone is someone else's catalyst for selling something these days.

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.