Great Throughts Treasury

"The essence of propaganda is the presentation of one side of the picture only."

"All propaganda messages tend to occur in three stages: the stage of drawing attention and arousing interest, the stage of emotional stimulation, and the stage of showing how tension thus created can be relieved (i.e., by accepting the speaker’s advice)."

"Communism and Fascism or Nazism although poles apart in their intellectual content are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority."

"Most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they “belong” with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations. This being the case, the propagandist is likely to find that his suggestions have fallen on fertile soil so long as he delivers his message with an eye to the existing attitudes and intellectual level of his audience."