Michael Parenti Quotes

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think(s), you know.

The real violence is committed in the writing of history, the records of the legal system, the reporting of news, through the manipulation of social contracts, and the control of information.

Official truths are often powerful illusions.

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.

Society and the system and politicians don't want people to be aware of things. They want people to believe what they have to show 'em.

Give people control of the media and they will use it. Don’t give them control and you will lose it.

They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them for their blindness.

The masses are absolutely being manipulated by those in power.

Society is made of words, whose meanings the powerful control, or try to.

The control of the past depends above all on the training of memory

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Power comes through public persuasion.

The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power.

Power can shape 'truth,' but not forever.

I think a lot of things are shoved in our face, politically and historically, for money, and that's the motive.

Those in power always try to distort reality, to suit their needs and keep things safe.

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

Once we recognize the power of propaganda, we need to ask whether its exercise is consistent with those democratic ideals to which lip-service is commonly accorded.

In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.

who are the brain police?

Whenever you have people in power, they try to control people. It's not necessarily a bad thing to control people - you can control people for good, you can control people for bad, but you're gonna try and control people.