Ideological Quotes

• The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination,' we might say - exercised through the mass media.

  Noam Chomsky

  Media, Democracy, United States

  Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault (2006). “The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature”, The New Press

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• The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need for words, and ask no more than complicitous silence.

  Pierre Bourdieu

  Successful, Silence, Needs

  Pierre Bourdieu (1977). “Equisse D'une Théorie de la Pratique”, p.188, Cambridge University Press

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• In order to keep anything cultural, logical, or ideological, you have to reinvent the reality of it.

  Ani DiFranco

  Reality, Order, Logical

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• I refer to the debt - the new red menace. This time consisting of ink.

  Mitch Daniels

  Ink, Debt, Red

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• An ideologue - one who thinks ideologically - can't lose. He can't lose because his answer, his interpretation and his attitude have been determined in advance of the particular experience or observation. They are derived from the ideology, and not subject to the facts.

  James Burnham

  Attitude, Thinking, Experience

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• [A]t the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of co-ordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Senior, War, White

  Slavoj Žižek (2002). “Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates”, p.16, Verso

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• When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases.

  Erik Erikson

  War, Mean, Men

  "The Problem of Ego Identity", Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1956.

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• Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.

  Paulo Freire

  Exercise, World, Students

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.56, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.

  Juan Williams

  Country, War, Political

  "JUAN WILLIAMS: I Was Fired for Telling the Truth" by Juan Williams, www.foxnews.com. October 21, 2010.

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• There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts.

  Jiang Qing

  Love, Peace, Coexist

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• The press is our chief ideological weapon.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Media Control, Weapons, Call Of Duty

  Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev (1964). “The great mission of literature and art”

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• Fascism is itself less 'ideological', in so far as it openly proclaims the principle of domination that is elsewhere concealed.

  Theodor Adorno

  Principles, Fascism, Domination

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.108, Verso

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• There is nothing worth having that can he obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating.

  George Wald

  War, Self, Nuclear

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• There is an ideological colonization we have to be careful of that tries to destroy the family.

  Pope Francis

  Trying, Colonization, Be Careful

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• I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide.

  Elena Kagan

  Wisdom, Truth, School

  Opening Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee at the USSC Justice Confirmation Hearings, delivered 28 June 2010

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• Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Country, Opening Up, Rights

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• Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974.

  Jose Saramago

  Thinking, Political, Atmosphere

  "Interview with Jose Saramago, Author of Blindness". Political Affairs Magazine Interview, www.politicalaffairs.net. March 2006.

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• We give you the facts. I told you information is power - knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts.

  Tavis Smiley

  Country, Information Is Power, Giving

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• You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea.
  You can kill a man, but not an idea.

  Benazir Bhutto

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Freedom

  Benazir Bhutto (1989). “Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography”, Simon & Schuster

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• From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.

  Idries Shah

  Attitude, Culture, Causes

  Idries Shah (1974). “The Elephant in the Dark”, p.11, Octagon Press Ltd

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• Terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society.

  Rocco Galati

  War, Years, Political

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• We need a new political language with broader narratives. Such a language has to unravel the pervasive ideological, pedagogical, and economic dynamics of a form of economic Darwinism that now governs much of the world. This system must be demystified, politicized, and recognized for the ways in which it has come to pose a dire threat to democracy.

  Henry Giroux

  Political Language, Democracy, Needs

  "Higher Education Under Attack". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

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• Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Team, Fighting, Fate

  Jonathan Haidt (2016). “Can't We All Disagree More Constructively?: from The Righteous Mind”, p.46, Vintage

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• I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.

  Barbara Kruger

  Thinking, People, Battle

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• In a way I'm almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair.

  Robert Harris

  Party, Personality, Way

  "Robert Harris: 'I used to love politics. Not now'". Interview with Ryan Gilbey, www.theguardian.com. April 2, 2010.

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