Jacques Ellul Quotes
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The first builder of a city was Cain.
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Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.
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It is frightening to see how easily the church accepts all this. Hardly had it achieved peace before it itself began to persecute. … It commenced the persecution of heretics, and primarily, of course, those who contested the truth and validity of this alliance of empire and church.
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Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal. This is why I maintain that no state in the modern world is legitimate. No present-day authority can claim to be instructed by God, for all authority is set in the framework of a totalitarian state. This is why I decide for anarchy.
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The combination of Christian truth and political power led to the creation of the complex that we know so well. … The emperor endows the church handsomely, helps it in all that it does, aids it in its 'mission.' The church supports the emperor’s legitimacy and assures him that he is God’s representative on earth.
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The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation.
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Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible.
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'Righteous Abel,' says Matthew 23:34-45. What luck! So there is a righteous race! No such thing: Abel dies leaving no children, a fact full of meaning. He is unable to transmit his righteousness.
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I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.
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Cain is completely dissatisfied with the security granted to him by God, and so he searches out his own security. ... He will satisfy his desire for eternity by producing children, and he will satisfy his desire for security by creating a place belonging to him, a city.
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Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.
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The exousia of political power … is a rebel exousia, an angel in revolt against God.
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There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action.
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The social body that had been effectively threatened by the diffusion of a faith that bordered on anarchism, on a total lack of interest in worldly matters (administration, commerce, etc.), … reacted in self-defense and absorbed the foreign body, making it serve its own ends.
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Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.
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Jesus find the same mistake in both the Saducees and the Pharisees, both those who collaborate with the Romans and those who oppose them. In the eyes of Jesus they are both wrong. He will not play any part in the political drama.
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Evangelical proclamation was essentially subversive. Put in danger by it, the forces of the social body have replied by integrating this power of negation, of challenge, by absorbing it.
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It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.
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Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.
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Technique shapes an aristocratic society, which in turn implies aristocratic government. Democracy in such a society can only be a mere appearance. Even now, we see in propaganda the premises of such a state of affairs. When it comes to state propaganda, there is no longer any question of democracy.
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Whereas the good news had first been published for its own sake with no concern for success, now ineluctably success brought, as always, a desire for it. … They were not aware of what was happening, namely, that society was inverting Christianity instead of being subverted by it.
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The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.
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Man's power is first of all the result of hardening his heart against God: man affirms that he is strong, conquers the world, and builds cities.
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Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.