Fear-Industry Quotes – 239 Selected Sayings

"Quite frankly, having an uninformed populace works extremely well, particularly when you have a media that doesn't understand its responsibility and feels more like it's an arm of a political party. They can really take advantage of an uninformed populace."

Ben Carson

"We need to understand that we are not each others' enemies in this country. And it is only the political class that derives its power by creating friction. It is only the media that derives its importance by creating friction... that uses every little thing to create this chasm between people. This is not who we are."

Ben Carson

"The corporations that profit from permanent war need us to be afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear permits the government to operate in secret. Fear means we are willing to give up our rights and liberties for promises of security. The imposition of fear ensures that the corporations that wrecked the country cannot be challenged. Fear keeps us penned in like livestock."

Chris Hedges

"If we remain fearful, then we will be further stripped of power as we barrel towards this neofeudalistic state where there is a world of masters and serfs, a kind of permanent underclass. That's what's happening; that's what's being created. Rapacious corporate business interests have shattered all kinds of regulations and controls. They have carried out a coup d'etat in slow motion. And it's over; they've won."

Chris Hedges

"A lot of the strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own minds. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants, but there isn't any way to punish a large number of deviants. It's too expensive to even try. So, the solution is to colonize the minds of children as they're growing up, so that they become their own police, and to report on others who are deviating."

John Taylor Gatto

"The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time."

Steven Spielberg

"The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"The illusion that one has understood the past feeds the further illusion that one can predict and control the future. These illusions are comforting. They reduce the anxiety that we would experience if we allowed ourselves to fully acknowledge the uncertainties of existence. We all have a need for the reassuring message that actions have appropriate consequences, and that success will reward wisdom and courage. Many business books are tailor-made to satisfy this need."

Daniel Kahneman

"The Pavlovian strategy in public relations has people conditioned more and more to ask themselves, "What do other people think?" As a result, a common delusion is created: people are incited to think what other people think, and thus public opinion may mushroom out into a mass prejudice. Expressed in psychoanalytic terms, through daily propagandistic noise backed up by forceful verbal cues, people can more and more be forced to identify with the powerful noisemaker. Big brother's voice resounds in all the little brothers."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"“To suppress a rebellion, it is not necessary to act violently. Methods like Hitler's are outdated. It suffices to create such a strong collective conditioning that the very thought of rebellion no longer arises in people's minds.

The ideal would be to shape people from birth and restrict their innate biological abilities. Afterwards, one would continue with conditioning and strictly reduce education to the acquisition of professional skills. An uneducated person has a limited horizon, and the more their thinking is confined to mediocre aspirations, the less capable they are of rebelling.

We must ensure that access to science becomes increasingly difficult and elitist, that a divide forms between people and science, and that information for the general public contains no subversive content. Above all, no philosophy. Here too, we must use the power of persuasion, not open violence.

On television, large-scale entertainment programs are broadcast that appeal exclusively to feelings or instincts. The mind will be occupied with the useless and playful. They can distract their minds from thinking through constant chatter and music.

We will place sexuality at the very top of a person's interest list. There is no better social tranquilizer.

In general, we will do this so that the serious part of existence is eliminated, everything valuable is ridiculed, and frivolity is constantly supported, so that public euphoria becomes the measure of human happiness and a model of freedom.

In this way, conditioning leads to such integration that our only fear is being excluded from the system and thus losing access to the conditions necessary for happiness.

The mass person thus formed must be treated as what he is: like a cow, and one must care for him like a herd. Everything that leads to the apathy of his clear mind is a public good, and everything that could awaken this good must be mocked, suppressed, and fought.

Any doctrine questioning the system must be branded as subversive and terrorist. And those who support it will then be treated as terrorists.”"

Günther Anders

"The easiest way to grab people’s attention is to make them frightened. This is how we are built really as animals. So if you want to distract the public from issues like government corruption or like deteriorating health care system or deteriorating education system, the best thing is to find an external enemy that threatens the survival of the nation and immediately that gets all the attention and people forget about the other things"

Yuval Noah Harari

"The people in the public relations industry aren’t there for the fun of it. They’re doing work. They’re trying to instill the right values. In fact, they have a conception of what democracy ought to be: It ought to be a system in which the specialized class is trained to work in the service of the masters, the people who own the society. The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. They ought to be sitting alone in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you’re watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism. That’s all there is in life. You may think in your own head that there’s got to be something more in life than this, but since you’re watching the tube alone you assume, I must be crazy …"

Noam Chomsky

"We see entire societies suddenly fixate their thoughts on a single topic and lose their minds; millions of people are simultaneously gripped by a single delusion until their attention is captured by a new absurdity more fascinating than the first."

Charles MacKay

"Propaganda is not designed to make idiots out of people. It's designed for idiots from the start."

George Bernard Shaw

"Who controls the memes, controls the Universe"

Elon Musk

"Many tired old lies are being fed to secondary and college students through their textbooks and their brainwashed teachers, and to the general public through television receivers and daily newspapers. Despite the well-entrenched position of the pseudoscientists and their powerful allies in politics and the communications media, encouraging progress is being made by some scientists. Bit by bit the truth is emerging and the forces of censorship, moral intimidation and liberal bigotry are losing ground."

MOYO-Film

"Friends, the press and the government have begun a relationship so intimate and immoral that it would make Satan himself blush with shame. Journalists used to question reasons for war and denounce abuses of power. Now they are like toothless babies, sucking on pacifiers of misinformation, only to poop it out into the diaper we call the 6 o'clock news."

Kent Brockman

"Not a day goes by without the mainstream media reporting on some war, epidemic, or other problem in the world. The problem is that this type of reporting, as we find it, is sheer madness. Information is distorted or not mentioned at all. It is the partial truths that make the press so dangerous. Wars are sold as “humanitarian interventions,” diseases are pushed to play into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry. There are always two sides to every coin, but we are only shown one side, which is supposed to be the “truth.” They show us what they want us to see and leave out what does not fit into their desired worldview. At this point, we should ask ourselves whether we want to continue consuming this filth and supporting it financially by buying certain tabloids such as Bild, Spiegel & Co. “Either you rebel, or you become complicit.”"

Ignazio Silone