The truth is always more heroic than the hype.  Jessica Lynch

The motion picture industry could be the most powerful instrument of propaganda in the world, whether it tries to be or not.  --FDR

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.  Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.                                      Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)

You just can’t believe what’s reported in the mainstream media. As a people, we should try to educate ourselves and make more informed decisions. We should be more progressive.         Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns

People are all alike in their promises.  It is only in their deeds that they are different.                       Jean Baptiste Moliere

They've looked to force before exhausting diplomacy.  They bullied when they should have persuaded.                                                          John Kerry on his opponent's administration

We are drowning in information and starving for meaning.  --Rutherford Rogers

So often we think we have got to make a difference and be a big dog.  Let us just try to be little fleas biting.  Enough fleas biting strategically can make a very big dog very uncomfortable.                       Marian Wright Edelman

I've stopped reading the newspapers.               Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (2004)

For I imagine we are not striving merely to secure victory for my suggestions or for yours; rather we ought both of us to fight in support of the truth and the whole truth.  --Socrates                   

The best leaders are very often the best listeners.  They have an open mind.  They are not interested in having their own way but in finding the best way. Wilfred Peterson

There can be no public without full publicity in respect to all consequences which concern it.      John Dewey

Propaganda as a mere tool is no more moral or immoral than a pump handle....the only effective weapon against propaganda on behalf of one policy seems to be propaganda on behalf of an alternative. Harold Lasswell

Nothing else will matter unless we win the war of ideas. --John Kerry

In a world where terrorism can be as easy a matter as popping ricin into an envelope, or car-bombing an American facility in any of 200 capitals around the world, it behooves us, as a country, to start thinking motives, as well as means. That's what public diplomacy is all about. But of course, all the slick commercials and fancy p.r. kits are overwhelmed by TV images of Americans walking the mean streets of Baghdad.  --James P. Pinkerton

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.                       Paul Bremer, U.S. Administrator in Iraq

Dulce bellum inexpertis. (War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.) --Erasmus

Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.  Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks

Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings and actions that make for peace and freedom.  Conversely almost nobody wants war or tyranny; but a great many people find an intense pleasure in the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for war and tyranny.                                Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Do not try to save the world by loving thy neighbor; it will only make him nervous.  Save the world by respecting thy neighbor's rights under law and insisting that he respect yours (under the same law.)  --E. B. White

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for liberty and truth. --Henrik Ibsen

The cult of the hero is the absolutely necessary complement of the massification of society.  We see the automatic creation of this cult in connection with champion athletes, movie stars, and even such abstractions as Davy Crockett in the United States....Jacques Ellul, Propaganda

The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd.            Walter Lippman, The Phantom Public

In the struggle for power, propaganda is an instrument to be used by those who want to secure or retain power just as much as it is by those wanting to displace them.                                   Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind

America is dumb, is something like a dumb puppy that has big teeth--that can bite and hurt you, aggressive.  --Johnny Depp

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Albert Einstein

It is safer for even the tyrant to depend upon persuasion, since he cannot perpetually remain upon the alert.  (Even the tyrant must sleep.)  For the few who would rule the many under democratic conditions, there is no choice but persuasion.    Harold D. Lasswell

Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and has stimulated the hope of instant results.  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind.  In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the mind.  --Napolean Bonaparte

Another war is already under way, one in which journalists are already playing an important role as a conduit or filter, though not just the scribblers and broadcasters from the West.  It is the propaganda war.  --The Economist, October 4, 2001

There can be no propaganda without a personality, a political chief.  Clemenceau, Daladier, De Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt, MacArthur are obvious examples.  And even more, Khrushchev, who, after having denounced the cult of personality, slipped into the same role, differently, but with the same ease and obeying the same necessity.  The nation's unanimity is necessary.  This unanimity is embodied in one personality, in whom everyone finds himself, in whom everyone hopes and projects himself, and for whom everything is possible and permissible. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, 1965

A meme (rhymes with "dream") is a unit of information (a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a notion of fashion, philosophy or politics) that leaps from brain to brain.  Memes compete with one another through a population much the same way genes pass through a species.  Potent memes can change minds, alter behavior, catalyze collective mindshifts and transform cultures.  Which is why meme warfare has become the geopolitical battle of our information age.  Whoever has the memes has the power.  --Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam

America had one idea attached to its brand. We presented ourselves as the world's last superpower.   And that was the world's worst branding idea. --Jack Trout, former Madison Avenue adman, hired by the State Department to reshape America's image in the world.