Jacques Ellul Quotes

• The outlook for the Federal budget is bleak.

  Doug Elmendorf

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

  Jacques Ellul

• The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment.

  Jacques Ellul

• 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.

  Jacques Ellul

• The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this link with one’s neighbor.

  Jacques Ellul

• The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.

  Jacques Ellul

• Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible.

  Jacques Ellul

• 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

• Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.

  Jacques Ellul

• It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.

  Jacques Ellul

• In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act.

  Jacques Ellul

• 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

• 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

Jacques Ellul (13)

Birth:	6th January, 1912
Death:	19th May, 1994
Nationality:	French
Profession:	Philosopher, Professor, Sociologist, Theologian

About

Jacques Ellul was born in Bordeaux, France. He was a French philosopher, sociologist, lay theologian and professor who was a noted Christian anarchist. He was a longtime Professor of History and the Sociology of Institutions on the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences at the University of Bordeaux. The dominant theme of his work proved to be the threat to human freedom and religion created by modern technology. Among his most influential books are The Technological Society and Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. As a philosopher and theologian, he further explored the religiosity of the technological society. He studied at the University of Bordeaux and the University of Paris. He wrote other books include: The presence of the Kingdom, The humiliation of the word, The Meaning of the City, The politics of God and the politics of man, The new demons, The ethics of freedom, The subversion of Christianity, and Anarchy and Christianity.

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