Andy Rooney Quotes

Hitler's vast propaganda successes were accomplished with little more than the radio and loudspeaker, and without TV and tape and video recording . . . Today the art of mind control is in the process of becoming a science.

Because I live and work in Washington, D.C., I have a ringside seat at the world capital of The Persuasive Arts, or, as I like to call it, The Opinions Racket.

The primary purpose of the media is to mobilize support for the controlling interests.

Power comes through public persuasion.

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.

It is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and '60s style of propaganda.

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 ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.

To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realized as being true, that is called propaganda.

It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.

The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive

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.

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others.

By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.

The masses are absolutely being manipulated by those in power.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

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.

Power can shape 'truth,' but not forever.

If you heard 40 times in a day that Newt Gingrich takes the wings off of butterflies, eventually you'd believe it.

The power of propaganda is to say something enough times that it becomes the Big Lie.

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

The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious it makes little or no difference.

The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.

I'm just a propagandist and a propagandist doesn't have to know what he is talking about, just so he talks about it most convincingly.