Pierre Bourdieu Quotes

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material.

There's always some kind of hidden logic.

Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.

Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.

Everybody is under pressure to shut up and sing.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Sasha, aren’t you a good communist? How can you allow so much ideological freedom? Do something!.

There have been … totalitarian forces in our lifetime: The totalitarianism of fascism and now of capitalism.

Nowadays, we seldom remember that the totalitarianism that emerged early this century was thought to embody, above all, modernity and technology.

Mere analysis, that is the Party line, was … substituted for the raw, emergent movement of life itself. The psychology of human beings was descended not directly from experience but from a set of political theories.

The ideology of a ruling class is of little use unless it is accepted by those being ruled.

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it's exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather: all pervasive and virtually inescapable.

Deference has been codified in American life as political correctness. And political correctness functions like a despotic regime. It is an oppressiveness that spreads its edicts further and further into the crevices of everyday life.

I, for one, always expect my husband to read my mind.

Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced.

Once, I was up north with friends and, after dinner, one lady who was at the table said, 'Would you sing for me?' and I went 'Well, sure.' And the other women are looking and going, 'You never sing for us.' Well, you never ask me.

At home we never mention football. Not with my wife, not with my sons, not with my mother. Sometimes they will see something in the paper and ask me what I think. But I say, nothing.

Ideology today is unfreedom which you sincerely personally experience as freedom.

Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.

In the last analysis, terrorism is an idea generated by capitalism to justify better defense measures to safeguard capitalism.

Truth as a cultural ideal has functioned as an opiate, perhaps the only serious opiate of the modern world. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses. Raymond Aron retorted that Marxist ideas were in turn the opiate of the intellectuals. There is perspicacity in both these polemical thrusts. But is perspicacity truth? I wish to suggest that perhaps truth has been the real opiate, of both the masses and the intellectuals.

When man has nothing but his will to assert--even his good-will--it is always bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of bullying, capitalism another: and liberty is a change of chains.

Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.