Best 276 quotes in «ideology quotes» category

The ideological premise, however, "can" not be defective; it is sacrosanct. ... Whatever does not seem right, whatever does not fit, must be explained by something wrong outside of the ideology; for its perfection is beyond all doubt. In (t)his way the ideology immunizes itself by offering more and more hair-splitting accusations. Betrayal and the dark powers of inner and outer enemies lie in wait everywhere. Theories about conspiracies develop and conveniently hide the absurdity of the premise, necessitating and justifying bloody purges.

The last time I heard an orthodox Marxist statement that was music to my ears was from a member of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, during the mass slaughter in the country. 'The terms Hutu and Tutsi,' he said severely, 'are merely ideological constructs, describing different relationships to the means and mode of production.' But of course!

The method of addition is quite charming if it involves adding to the self such things as a cat, a dog, roast pork, love of the sea or of cold showers. But the matter becomes less idyllic if a person decides to add love for communism, for the homeland, for Mussolini, for Roman Catholicism or atheism, for fascism or anti-fascism. In both cases the method remains exactly the same: a person stubbornly defending the superiority of cats over other animals is doing basically the same thing as one who maintains that Mussolini was the sole saviour of Italy: he is proud of this attribute of the self and he tries to make this attribute (a cat or Mussolini) acknowledged and loved by everyone. Here is that strange paradox to which all people cultivating the self by way of the addition method are subject: they use addition in order to create a unique, inimitable self, yet because they automatically become propagandists for the added attributes, they are actually doing everything in their power to make as many others as possible similar to themselves; as a result, their uniqueness (so painfully gained) quickly begins to disappear.

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

The more we're thrown into conflict with each other through engineered distrust, the less able we are to unite against those responsible.

The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility—based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men—is in danger, whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion.

The new type of capitalists - the industrial leader - develops new talents with his new function in economic life and, above all, a new discipline and evaluation of labour. He allows commercial interests to recede to a certain extent and concentrates on the internal organization of his factory. The principle of expediency, methodical planning and calculability, which had become very important in the economy in the leading countries since the fifteenth century, now becomes all-powerful. The employer disciplines himself just as ruthless as he does his workmen and employees, and becomes just as much the slave of his concern as his staff. The raising of labour to the level of the ethical force, its glorification and adoration, is fundamentally nothing but the ideological transfiguration of the striving for success and profit and an attempt to stimulate even those elements who share least in the fruits of their labour into enthusiastic co-operation. The idea of freedom is part of the same ideology.

The numbers were, at best, guesstimates, and all three men knew it. The relevant figure would ultimately be the one that represented the most they could possibly ask from Congress without raising too many questions. Whatever that sum turned out to be, they knew they could count on (Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury) Kashkari to perform some sort of mathematical voodoo to justify it:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. [These words are also inscribed upon his grave]

The politics of whiteness transcends the colour of anyone's skin. It is an occupying force in the mind. It is a political ideology that is concerned with maintaining power through domination and exclusion. Anyone can buy into it, just like anyone can choose to challenge it. [...] Those who perceive every critique of white-dominated politics to be an attack of them as a white person are probably part of the problem.

The purity of the human mind would allow by far more progress in all aspects if it wasn’t for the ideological pollutants….

The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.

The president has listened to some people, the so-called Vulcans in the White House, the ideologues. But you know, unlike the Vulcans of Star Trek who made the decisions based on logic and fact, these guys make it on ideology. These aren't Vulcans. There are Klingons in the White House. But unlike the real Klingons of Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a battle of their own. Don't let faux Klingons send real Americans to war.

The problem with political ideologues such as arch Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg (a.k.a. JackOff Grease-Smug) is that they are totally divorced from reality with heads stuck firmly in the clouds. Add to that the priggish and rarefied demeanour of this particular outlandishly pompous ass and you end up with a complete disconnect with the way things actually work. Pragmatism and consensus articulated by compassionate people who live in the real world and with feet firmly on the ground must win the day with Britain's economic interests foremost in mind. Get on your Penny Farthing Jacob and start peddling fast. You are a tiresome irrelevance better consigned to a museum for musty relics.

~ There is a middle point to all things prayer~ Gabriel

There are no atheists in foxholes or ideologues in a financial crisis. Ben Bernanke

There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning. I mean by the political no more than the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves; and what I have tried to show throughout this book is that the history of modern literary theory is part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Norman N. Holland, literary theory has been indissociably bound up with political beliefs and ideological values. Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times. Nor should this be in the least cause for surprise. For any body of theory concerned with human meaning, value, language, feeling and experience will inevitably engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature of human individuals and societies, problems of power and sexuality, interpretations of past history, versions of the present and hopes for the future. It is not a matter of regretting that this is so — of blaming literary theory for being caught up with such questions, as opposed to some 'pure' literary theory which might be absolved from them. Such 'pure' literary theory is an academic myth: some of the theories we have examined in this book are nowhere more clearly ideological than in their attempts to ignore history and politics altogether. Literary theories are not to be upbraided for being political, but for being on the whole covertly or unconsciously so — for the blindness with which they offer as a supposedly 'technical', 'self-evident', 'scientific' or 'universal' truth doctrines which with a little reflection can be seen to relate to and reinforce the particular interests of particular groups of people at particular times.

There is a tendency, especially today, to reduce all political analysis to an ideological formula, and to judge everything according to this formula. Such a reduction is usually erroneous, even dangerous, when applied to a complicated world. It is, of course, easier to simplify everything in order to make it more comprehensible. But the world does not become simpler when we ideologically simplify. We become simpler – to the point of stupidity.

There is every reason why the standards in our civilization are so low, because we have "poisoned," in a literal sense of the word, our minds with the physico-chemical effects of wrong ideas.

There is no monopoly of common sense On either side of the political fence We share the same biology Regardless of ideology Believe me when I say to you I hope the Russians love their children too [...] There's no such thing as a winnable war It's a lie we don't believe anymore ..." (The Russians)

There is nothing wrong in following a teacher in the path of self-awareness, but the moment one begins to see that teacher as the authority of one's life, immediately one goes astray from the path of self-realization and indeed from the path of truth, and eventually ends up in the same kind of trap of doctrines and laws that one wanted to be free from in the first place. That's how all religions have been born. Loyalty to a teacher or messiah, inadvertently leads to psychological slavery, and in often cases, the enslaved is not even aware of the enslavement. It's a kind of illusion one lives in, where the teacher's word or the prophet's doctrines become gospel in the life of an individual. Hence, all shortcomings of that teacher or prophet creep into the life of his followers as well.

There is nothing wrong with entertainment. As some psychiatrist once put it, we all build castles in the air. The problems come when we try to live in them. The communications media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with telegraphy and photography at their center, called the peek-a-boo world into existence, but we did not come to live there until television. Television gave the epistemological biases of the telegraph and the photograph their most potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection. And it brought them into the home. We are by now well into a second generation of children for whom television has been their first and most accessible teacher and, for many, their most reliable companion and friend. To put it plainly, television is the command center of the new epistemology. There is no audience so young that it is barred from television. There is no poverty so abject that it must forgo television. There is no education so exalted that it is not modified by television. And most important of all, there is no subject of public interest—politics, news, education, religion, science, sports—that does not find its way to television. Which means that all public understanding of these subjects is shaped by the biases of television.

The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it.

There's no evidence from decades of Pew Research surveys that public opinion, in the aggregate, is more extreme now than in the past. But what has changed -- and pretty dramatically -- is the growing tendency of people to sort themselves into political parties based on their ideological differences.

The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world, for which end it is prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington’s policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War II the United States has: 1) Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected; 2) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries; 3) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; 4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries; 5) Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.

The world, however, is indebted to Germany in a terrifying way, because she demonstrated to everyone what the ultimate conclusions of negative and destructive ideas really are. Ideas which in London or New York are repeated as seemingly harmless abstractions have been shown up by the Germans in all their blood-chilling finality. In this sense Nazi Germany has become the Gorgonian Mirror in which a decadent West could study its own features.

The serene confidence with which Western journalists and liberal academics prescribe solutions to our [Singapore's] problems is a source of constant wonder to us.

The “social justice” movement is not at all about social justice, but about relentlessly bullying anyone who does not subscribe to their Stalinist ideology.

[The] tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic, and political patterns...We are now...only beginning to explore the potentialities which it offers for developments in our culture outside technology, particularly in the social, political and economic fields. It is safe to predict that...such social inventions as modern-type Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed toward the adjustment of modern society to modern methods

Those who find it hypocritical of others to use, say, a smartphone, to speak ill of capitalism, needs to be reminded that capitalism is an ideology, not a technology.

...the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueller than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don't have the power over you they would like. That's why they do what they do. And I'm not going to give them the power now. But it was a cruel thing that they did, and when they had finished hurting me, a splinter of loneliness seemed to break off and stay inside me forever.

This is the lesson of all great television commercials: They provide a slogan, a symbol or a focus that creates for viewers a comprehensive and compelling image of themselves. In the shift from party politics to television politics, the same goal is sought. We are not permitted to know who is best at being President or Governor or Senator, but whose image is best in touching and soothing the deep reaches of our discontent. We look at the television screen and ask, in the same voracious way as the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" We are inclined to vote for those whose personality, family life, and style, as imaged on the screen, give back a better answer than the Queen received. As Xenophanes remarked twenty-five centuries ago, men always make their gods in their own image. But to this, television politics has added a new wrinkle: Those who would be gods refashion themselves into images the viewers would have them be.

They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair's about, and you gave him money and York Harding's books on the East and said, 'Go ahead. Win the East for democracy.' He never saw anything he hadn't heard in a lecture hall, and his writers and his lecturers made a fool of him.

Those two great genies of wishful fulfillment – messianic fervor and technological power – have spotted each other. If they come together, the world, as it is now known, will no longer exist.

Thus when an interpretation of the world, an ideology, for example, claims to explain everything, one thing remains inexplicable, namely, the interpretive system itself. And with that, every claim to completeness and finality fails.

Through comedy, we can touch core societal beliefs and transform them completely. I believe we can get to the truth of some deep societal ideologies, and begin to transform them into a new understanding. Far too many promote hateful ideologies, and we must do much more to bring our cultures together, in love and peace.

To be an original human, you must die to all labels. This death brings the real vitality in life. Now one may ask, how can one achieve it? And there is the problem of the so-called modern humans. They all want somebody to tell them, how to achieve something. Here is a fact, calculus can be taught, quantum physics can be taught, molecular biology can be taught, but not freedom of mind. And why do you need a path in the first place? If there is a bottle labeled poison, on the shelf, you don't just bring it down and drink the poison to know whether it will kill you. Likewise, once you really see the poisonous implications of the socio-culturally passed on labels, you simply tear them apart - throw them away as far as possible. Does one need to deceive oneself, to understand self-deception! If not, then why do you deceive yourself, by conforming to the social labels, be it a religious label, a non-religious label, a nationalist label, an intellectual label, or a gender label. You are a human - that's it.

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions... Ideology - that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.

We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas.

Truth cannot be constructed. To live in ideology is, as Havel so eloquently reminds us, inevitably to live in a lie. Truth can only be revealed. We cannot be creators, only receptors.

Unity can only come when there is better co-ordination and mutual understanding in the society; when there is no friction of thoughts and clash of ideologies. We should therefore follow the ideals established by the scholars and engage ourselves in virtuous deeds.

Utopia is an ideology best viewed from the top.

To view…woman as victims and nothing but is a very ‘male’ view of the processes involved, one that is comforting to men because by definition it sees what they do and achieve as indicating power and whatever women do and achieve as of course indicating powerlessness. A more complex feminist view argues that women in the processes of their everyday lives develop practices and strategies to get what they want out of life – in so doing, some we win some we lose…However what is involved is complex, whatever ideological accounts produced by men and some feminists may suggest

Using information about animal behavior to justify social or political ideology is wrong . . . People need to be able to make decisions about their lives without having to worry about keeping up with the bonobos.

Very little of what he learned of people’s actions began or ended with either the noble ideals or the fiendish wickedness he had been taught lay behind all great struggles. There was something comforting in this.

Virulence is the sound of a self-selecting community talking to itself and positively reinforcing itself with no obligation to answer to anyone or look anyone in the eye.

Wenn man mich drängen würde, meine politische Denkweise mit einem Etikett zu versehen, würde ich sie pessimistisch-anarchistischen Quietismus nennen, oder anarchistisch-quietistischen Pessismismus oder pessimistisch-quietistischen Anarchismus: Anarchismus, weil die Erfahrung mir sagt, was an der Politik schlecht ist, ist die Macht selbst; Quietismus, weil ich meine Zweifel am Vorhaben der Weltveränderung habe, einem Vorhaben, das mit dem Streben nach Macht infiziert ist; und Pessismus, weil ich bezweifle, dass die Dinge grundlegend geändert werden können.

What makes today’s popular atheism so depressing is neither its conceptual boorishness nor its self-righteousness but simply its cultural inevitability. It is the final, predictable, and unsurprisingly vulgar expression of an ideological tradition that has, after many centuries, become so pervasive and habitual that most of us have no idea how to doubt its premises or how to avert its consequences. This is a fairly sad state of affairs, because those consequences have at times proved quite terrible.

What Althusser does… is to rethink the concept of ideology in terms of Lacan’s ‘imaginary’. For the relation of an individual subject to society as a whole in Althusser’s theory is rather like the relation of the small child to his or her mirror-image in Lacan’s. In both cases, the human subject is supplied with a satisfyingly unified image of selfhood by identifying with an object which reflects this image back to it in a closed, narcissistic circle. In both cases, too, this image involves a misrecognition, since it idealizes the subject’s real situation. The child is not actually as integrated as its image in the mirror suggests; I am not actually the coherent, autonomous, self generating subject I know myself to be in the ideological sphere, but the ‘decentred’ function of several social determinants. Duly enthralled by the image of myself I receive, I subject myself to it; and it is through this ‘subjection’ that I become a subject.

[W]hat counts as ‘realistic’, what seems possible at any point in the social field, is defined by a series of political determinations. An ideological position can never be really successful until it is naturalized, and it cannot be naturalized while it is still thought of as a value rather than a fact. Accordingly, neoliberalism has sought to eliminate the very category of value in the ethical sense. Over the past thirty years, capitalist realism has successfully installed a ‘business ontology’ in which it is simply obvious that everything in society, including healthcare and education, should be run as a business. … [E]mancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable.