Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

What we want is not freedom but its appearances.

I'd rather control someone than be controlled.

As I've said, freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a real choice, it just means we haven't seen the shotgun aimed at our navel.

There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

Sham liberty will be proclaimed everywhere.

Behind the masks of total choice, different forms of the same alienation confront each other.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.

If I get ‘em by the short and curlies, the hearts and minds will follow.

When a wrong thought is told a thousand times and impressed on one’s brain, one starts feeling the falsehood as truth. Similarly if the mind of slave is hammered of slavery, he starts enjoying his slavery

For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of brainwashing under freedom to which we are subjected and which all too often we are as willing or unwitting instruments

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force of arms than to subjugate the minds of a single village... .

We must form men so that they can only will what we wish them to will.

We lead them to believe that we are in complete control over every aspect of their lives.

Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.

Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action.

Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals we dare not present to them.

The word "education" has an evil sound in politics; there is a pretense of education, when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ...

No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.

As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense.

Sorcerers are convinced that all of us are a bunch of nincompoops. We can never relinquish our crummy control voluntarily, thus we have to be tricked