Jon Lee Anderson Quotes

I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 - I didn't have television then.

The factors that are the long-term influences on opinion in this country are education, social and economic background, and religion. Those are the great constants. People's basic attitudes change very little.

If you control the flow of information, you can control the conversation around important issues. If you can control the conversation, you can change this country.

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].

Write letters to your editors, write to your members of Congress, and write to your news stations.

The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.

The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference.

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, reality has no advertising budget.

It was kind of interesting: [People] didn't really want to talk about it too much. And then after the election, it's kind of like they've been unleashed.

The Sixties, of course, was the worst time in the world to try and bring up a child. They were exposed to all these crazy things going on.

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.

It is the Press which has corrupted our political morals - and it is to the Press we must look for the means of our political regeneration.

Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

I try to preface everything with "this isn't new." Because most social movements have happened before and I get that. Nothing I'm doing is new.

In this world we live in now, with a 24/7 news cycle, perception can sometimes be more powerful than reality.

The power of the media is really the only new issue in the last 50 years, probably.

If the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set. The monarchy is mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go. There is so much else in the world that is more interesting.

The media is trying to portray that [Donald] Trump supporters are on the verge of abandoning him right now by highlighting how many of them wanted Hillary locked up, prosecuted, convicted, and all that.

The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of the newspapers.

The media can be an instrument of change. It can maintain the status quo and reflect the views of the society or it can, hopefully, awaken people and change minds. I think it depends on who’s piloting the plane.

The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.

But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?

In the '70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London.

The way I try to explain it the best is that if Critic A from publication A hates our show, and Critic B from publication B loves our show, what are we supposed to do with that? We have to just respect everyone's opinions and go on making the show we want to make. I've never worked on a show that was altered by critical reception. You just can't afford to do that. So in that regard, it's actually no different that working in theater. It's just a lot more voices.