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Everyone has been taught that technique is an application of science.... This traditional view is radically false. It takes into account only a single category of science and only a short period of time

Jacques Ellul

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Jacques Ellul
Age: 82 †
Born: 1912
Born: January 6
Died: 1994
Died: May 19
French Resistance Fighter
Philosopher
Sociologist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Bordèu
Single
Technique
Views
False
Taught
Traditional
Takes
Accounts
Radically
Everyone
Period
Category
Science
Periods
Categories
Time
Short
Application
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More quotes by Jacques Ellul

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The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself.
Jacques Ellul
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Because of the myth of progress, it is much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight-edged one.
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Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.
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The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and we must so act that it cannot take place.
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The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this link with one's neighbor.
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Fate operates when people give up
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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.
Jacques Ellul
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Almost always, it is the conviction that 'I am right' or 'my cause is the cause of justice' that triggers violence. That is, ...the moment propaganda does its work, violence is unleashed. And violence can be reduced by countering this propaganda.
Jacques Ellul
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Human life as a whole is not inundated by technique. It has room for activities that are not rationally or systematically ordered. But the collision between spontaneous activities and technique is catastrophic for the spontaneous activities.
Jacques Ellul
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No technique is possible when men are free. Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being.
Jacques Ellul
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All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis.
Jacques Ellul
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For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived.
Jacques Ellul
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Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.
Jacques Ellul
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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.
Jacques Ellul
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It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence. The whole structure of society implies it, of necessity. The more we mobilize the forces of nature, the more must we mobilize men and the more do we require order.
Jacques Ellul
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The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal - the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing...There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in a sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or radio program there.
Jacques Ellul
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Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.
Jacques Ellul
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It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.
Jacques Ellul
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We have to admit that there is an immeasurable distance between all that we read in the Bible and the practice of the Church and of Christians.
Jacques Ellul
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In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act.
Jacques Ellul