Eric Hoffer Quotes

If you own the facts, you may distort them as you like.

There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying.

A lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it the bigger it becomes.

Spin' is a polite word for deception. Spinners mislead by means that range from subtle omissions to outright lies. Spin paints a false picture of reality by bending facts, mischaracterizing the words of others, ignoring or denying crucial evidence, or just 'spinning a yarn' - by making things up.

Some people thought we were presenting Archie as a false character. President Nixon thought we were making a fool out of a good man.

They're not even within 100 miles of Baghdad. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion.

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

Nothing spooky or terrible happened on set, but we were told to say it had. We were giving a press conference and the writers were going on about these terrible things that supposedly happened while we were filming.

Politicians take something out of context to create problems.

When my body is covered and disappears, it's not about the relationship between me and the wall, but the relationship between me as an individual and those slogans which are used to fool the public.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

There is a demand in these days for men who can make wrong appear right.

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

Everything about the left is perception, manipulation, and lies. Everything. Everything is 'Wag the Dog.' Everything is a structured deception.

Washington culture has always had a difficult time acknowledging untruth.

The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.

Lying is a widespread habit among the Arabs and they have a low idea of truth.... The Arab has no scruples about lying if by it he obtains his objective.... He is more interested in feeling than facts, in conveying an impression than in giving a report.

Of all newspaper presses, I never heard anyone deny that the American is the worst.... [N]othing is easier than to make the people know only one side of a question; few things are easier than to keep them altogether from the knowledge of any particular affair; and, worse than all, on them [the American people] may easily be practiced the discovery that lies may work their intended effect, before the truth can overtake them. It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true or the suppression of things that are.

[In a political debate:] I'm afraid those are facts that are not facts.

False history gets written every day.

The reality often times does not match the rhetoric. The rhetoric is very easy if you keep the reality secret.

Is the government well served when a Secretary of State misleads public opinion, confuses it, feeds it pap, tells it that ... Soviet triumphs are really defeats, and Western defeats are really triumphs?

Accusations fit on a bumper sticker. The truth is longer.