John Grierson Quotes

• When quick results are imperative, the manipulation of the masses through symbols may be the only quick way of having a critical thing done.

  John Grierson

• We have built our State on the freedom of personal adventure.

  John Grierson

• The very effect of the education they were given… was to make men think; and, thinking, they became less and less satisfied with the miserable pays they received.

  John Grierson

• The oblique paradox of propaganda is that the lie in the throat becomes, by repetition, the truth in the heart.

  John Grierson

• The life of the village became more and more affected by strikes and lock-outs.

  John Grierson

• The cultivation of sensibility on purely personal lines may, in fact, be the very worst training for a world where only the corporate and the cooperative will matter.

  John Grierson

• Such manifestations I account as representing the creative leadership of the new forces of thought and appreciation which attend changes in technological pattern and therefore of the pattern of human relationships in society.

  John Grierson

• Some of us learned in a school of philosophy which taught that all was for the common good and nothing for oneself and have never, in any case, regarded the pursuit of happiness as anything other than an aberration of the human spirit.

  John Grierson

• Political conflicts distort and disturb a people’s sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency. What is vital is disguised by what is merely a matter of well being.

  John Grierson

• My view… would be that we are entering upon a new and interim society which is neither capitalist nor socialist, but in which we can achieve central planning without loss of individual initiative, by the mere process of absorbing initiative in the function of planning.

  John Grierson

• My personal view is that such total planning by the state is an absolute good and not simply a relative good… I do not myself think of the attitude I take as deriving from Marx – though this undoubtedly will be suggested – but from Fichte and Hegel.

  John Grierson

• It is often more important to act than to understand… there are times… when two conflicting opinions, though one happens to be right, are more perilous than one opinion which is wrong.

  John Grierson

• In fact, the individual outlook becomes less and less valuable and more and more harmful unless it is transmitted into the corporate outlook.

  John Grierson

• For three hundred years we have had our focus on the individual. We have distinguished him from the objective world as the Middle Ages did not think of doing. We have given him the world and the universe as a playground for exploration and discovery.

  John Grierson

• Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums; are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty.

  John Grierson

• And, consequently, the art of propaganda or public information becomes one of the most powerful forms of directive statesmanship.

  John Grierson

John Grierson (16)

Birth:	26th April, 1898
Death:	19th February, 1972
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Documentary Filmmaker, Producer

About

John Grierson was born in Deanston, Stirling, Scotland. He was a Scottish-born British documentary filmmaker and producer. He studied at the University of Glasgow, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directed several documentary films include: Drifters, and Granton Trawler. He produced several documentary films include: Pett and Pott, The Song of Ceylon, Coal Face, The Saving of Bill Blewitt, Four Men in Prison, Miss Robin Hood, and Man of Africa.

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Today's Anniversary - 5th April

Births

• 1902 - Menachem Mendel Schneerson
• 1971 - Krista Allen
• 1966 - Mike McCready
• 1941 - Michael Moriarty

Deaths

• 2005 - Saul Bellow
• 1982 - Abe Fortas
• 1992 - Sam Walton
• 2000 - Lee Petty
• 1994 - Kurt Cobain