Quote

Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.

Jacques Ellul

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacques Ellul
Age: 82 †
Born: 1912
Born: January 6
Died: 1994
Died: May 19
French Resistance Fighter
Philosopher
Sociologist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Bordèu
Games
Less
Superfluous
Force
Purely
Become
Internals
Without
Internal
Thinking
Compelling
Exercise
Game

More quotes by Jacques Ellul

Image
It is the multiplication of men who are exluded from working which provokes war. We ought at least to bear this in mind when we boast of the continual decrease in human participation in technical operations.
Jacques Ellul
Image
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
Image
Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on the razor's edge.
Jacques Ellul
Image
And an apprenticeship to whatever gadgetry is useful in a technical world
Jacques Ellul
Image
(Propaganda) proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes - The two great routes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflex and the myth
Jacques Ellul
Image
Fate operates when people give up
Jacques Ellul
Image
Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement.
Jacques Ellul
Image
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
Image
To the ideal of high consumption and the downgrading of spiritual values corresponds a conception of injustice that centers exclusively on the problem of consumption and equality in consumption cannot be achieved except by violence.
Jacques Ellul
Image
Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.
Jacques Ellul
Image
It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.
Jacques Ellul
Image
For in a civilization which has lost the meaning of life, the most important thing a Christian can do is to live, and life, understood from the point of view of faith, has an extraordinary explosive force.
Jacques Ellul
Image
The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.
Jacques Ellul
Image
Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it.
Jacques Ellul
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.
Jacques Ellul
Image
Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.
Jacques Ellul