Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think they themselves are crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info.

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

Without a doubt, psychological warfare has proven its right to a place of dignity in our military arsenal.

In this war, which was total in every sense of the word, we have seen many great changes in military science. It seems to me that not the least of these was the development of psychological warfare as a specific and effective weapon.

That's basically what's going on now: Everything is propaganda.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn't about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

The key battleground in the war on terrorism, therefore, is in the minds of the American public.

I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology.... Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated.

Hearts and Minds

Wars are won in people’s minds. The Army must think it won and the people decide.

It's too easy to do a patriotic-themed show to crawl into people's hearts and minds.

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.

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.

The Russian Bolsheviks have discovered that truth does not matter so long as there is reiteration. They have no difficulty whatever in countering a fact by a lie which, if repeated often enough and loudly enough, becomes accepted by the people.

I'm a liar. I'll rip your mind up. I'll burn your soul, I'll turn you in to me.

An information operations team was sent to Afghanistan to conduct various psychological operations on the Afghans and Taliban. The team was then asked not to focus on the Taliban but on manipulating senators into giving more funds and troops [to the war].

They always try to play with our minds. But that won't work with our club. We've got 20 guys without brains.

The idea that fear can manipulate people and you can use fear in the media to get what you want is happening right now. I think it has a lot of relevance between 2017 and 70's.

Propaganda analysis can contribute to world peace by exposing those techniques that lead to armed conflict by creating misapprehension of reality.

...History shows that ... (people) can be deflected from their natural tendencies by artful propaganda, bogus crises, or other political trickery.

Take a good look around and you'll find people trying to mess with your mind.

The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.

Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels once remarked that if a lie is told often enough people will begin to see the lie as truth.

People only attack when they see weakness or when they think that someone is ashamed of it or embarrassed and they can't wait to stick it to 'em.