50 Propaganda Quotes About Influencing People’s Thoughts

Learn about what propaganda is through these propaganda quotes so you can be aware of anyone trying to manipulate your point of view.

Dictionary.com defines propaganda as “information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.,” or “the deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.”

Propaganda is basically used to influence your thoughts about people, ideas, or situations.

Therefore, it is essential to trust your information’s source and consider what the spread of the said information accomplishes.

Since the 20th century, propaganda has usually been thought of as manipulation.

However, historically the term was a neutral description of material or thoughts.

Take a few moments to read these propaganda quotes to learn more about this form of communication and influence.

Best Propaganda Quotes

Here are some popular propaganda quotes to get you thinking.

1. “The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda.” — Robert Capa

2. “This diet of cultural influence and propaganda is unremitting.” — Dominic Milton Trott

3. “The American people are free to do exactly what they are told.” — Ward Churchill

4. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” — George Orwell

5. “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.” — Eric Hoffer

6. “Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it triest to stir up friendly feeling?” — Bertrand Russell

7. “If someone can change your mind, he has won you over without raising his hand against you. This is the future of warfare.” — Bangambiki Habyarimana

8. “Those with unearned privileges often spin things as ‘political correctness’ to further silence those they wish to oppress.” — DaSahnne Stokes

9. “We are living in interesting times where truths and propaganda are all mixed up, and all you have to do is push a hashtag and sell ‘your truth.’” — Don Santo

10. “Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.” — Criss Jami

You will also enjoy our article on Edward Bernays quotes.

Modern Propaganda Quotes

Learn more about modern propaganda in the following quotes.

11. “That’s basically what’s going on now: Everything is propaganda.” — Lindsey Buckingham

12. “Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.” — John Berger

13. “The internet has made it much more effective and cheaper to spread propaganda.” — Evgeny Morozov

14. “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” — Garry Kasparov

15. “You should never trust anything reported by the media. Their first priority is to spread propaganda; their second priority is to make money.” — Varg Vikernes

16. “There is no denying that television is one of the most powerful propaganda media we’ve ever invented.” — Jim Fowler

17. “The papers are only going to show what they want the readers to see. It’s all propaganda, to be honest.” — Dionne Bromfield

18. “If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference and choose their news sources accordingly.” — Thomas Sowell

19. “I have said that propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation have always been part of political warfare. Social media and other new platforms have given it a new life and reach through which the fake news phenomenon can reach everywhere.” — Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

20. “The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery.” — Franklin Foer

Propaganda Quotes About Politics

As you’ll see in the following quotes, both major political parties blame the other for pushing their own propaganda.

21. “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” — Noam Chomsky

22. “Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” — William Blum

23. “For whatever reason, the mainstream media, for the most part, affixes itself to progressive or liberal propaganda.” — David Draiman

24. “The right way wants to destroy all the media and replace it with their propaganda.” — Cenk Uygur

25. “They follow the Hitler line – no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough, and the masses will regard it as truth.” — John F. Kennedy

26. “It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth—that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda.” — Harry Browne

27. “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” — Thomas Sowell

28. “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” — Saul Bellow

29. “This is the secret of propaganda: To totally saturate the person, whom the propaganda wants to lay hold of, with the ideas of the propaganda, without him even noticing that he is being saturated.” — Paul Watzlawick

30. “Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” — Hannah Arendt

The Dangers of Propaganda Quotes

Learn more about the dangers of propaganda in society with the following quotes.

31. “Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.” — Alice Walker

32. “Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake and strike the other way.” — Jean Anouilh

33. “You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.” — Robert A. Heinlein

34. “By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even Heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.” — Adolf Hitler

35. “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” — George Orwell

36. “I think most things I read on the Internet and in newspapers are propaganda. Everyone from the ‘New York Times’ to Rupert Murdoch has a point of view and is putting forth their own propaganda. They’re stuck with the facts as they are, but the way they interpret and frame them is wildly different.” — Frank Miller

37. “Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other ‘studies’ was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these ‘studies’ are about propaganda rather than serious education.” — Thomas Sowell

38. “We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, New World or CNN.” — B.W. Powe

39. “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell

40. “The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” — Adolf Hitler

Additional Propaganda Quotes

Let these quotes help you start spotting modern manipulation and propaganda.

41. “Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent.” — D.H. Lawrence

42. “It’s so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.” — Harold Pinter

43. “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” — George Orwell

44. “Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.” — Joseph Goebbels

45. “Disinformation has always existed. It’s not like all of a sudden we’ve just discovered this new thing called propaganda.” — Christopher Wylie

46. “Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what you don’t believe yourself.” — Decimius Magnus Ausonius

47. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” — Mark Twain

48. “Propaganda… serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.” — Eric Hoffer

49. “A lot of times in television, you don’t get the opportunity to show real life because we’re brainwashed to believe the propaganda that these things aren’t marketable, that these things don’t sell.” — Roy Choi

50. “Propaganda has a negative connotation, which it partially deserves, but I think there is some propaganda that is very positive. I feel that if you can do something that gets people’s attention, then maybe they’ll go and find out more about the person.” — Shepard Fairey

What Are Some Areas That Propaganda Is Used The Most Often?

Propaganda can be used in any context, such as high school king and queen, best-looking man or woman of the year, or anything else.

But there are a few areas where it has been used most often.

For example, propaganda is commonly used to promote either positive or negative views about religion, war, politics, politicians, and even economic choices.

Please share these propaganda quotes with your family and friends and share your thoughts in the comment section below.