Jacques Ellul Quotes

Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one technique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions and objectives—in short, all the technical laws and customs—which he encounters in office or factory.

Technical civilization has made the great error in not suppressing death, the only human reality still intact.

The system absorbs those who think they can utilize it. Nor can there be any question of finding a modus vivendi or achieving attenuations. It has been demonstrated how the liberal state becomes an authoritarian state. The course is set and no accommodation will be either lasting or sufficient. In face of this absolute power, only an absolutely negative position is viable. What we have in mind is the attitude that conscientous objectors take on a specific point, and not without good reason. In the present set-up the anarchist attitude of a total refusal of validity or legitimacy to any authority of any kind seems to me to be the only valid and viable one. The point is not to enforce a particular view of society but to establish a counterbalance, a protest, a sign of cleavage. In face of an absolute power only a total confrontation has any meaning.

Those who count on the good will of mankind display a delirious, idealistic optimism. Centuries of history, despite the facts, have not been able to convince them of the contrary; reason certainly will not change them. But they are so far removed from reality that their opinion is negligible.

The individual is in a dilemma: either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses to use traditional , personal, moral, or empirical means, thereby entering into competition with a power against which there is no efficacious defense and before which he must suffer defeat; or he decides to accept technical necessity, in which case he will himself by the victor, but only by submitting irreparably to technical slavery. In effect he has no freedom of choice.

To talk about belief is to inquire at the same time into its validity or truth. It is to enter into a critical study that is not without danger. There is no place for the facile skepticism that says it believes in nothing precisely because it is blind to what it does believe in. We have to be serious because our whole being is at stake here. When I ask what I believe in, I am "searching my conscience," as they used to put it. I am passing judgment on what I believe as this is brought to light. As one advances, a double movement takes place which causes one constantly to come across another belief that is often hidden but which also provides the pause needed to move on to its criticism. "As one advances" — we either have to advance here or be silent. I cannot say easily what I value or think just now, what I regard as true. I have to do something more difficult, which will undoubtedly involve some political evaluations, if I am to try to bring the roots of my beliefs to light.

Jesus does not advocate revolt or material conflict. ... He reverses the question, and as so often challenges his interlocutors: "But you ... it must not be the same among you." In other words, do not be so concerned about fighting kings. Let them be. Set up a marginal society which will not be interested in such things, in which there will be no power, authority or hierarchy. Do not do things as they are usually done in society, which you cannot change. Create another society on another foundation.

Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society, from politics, from history, for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt, which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances.

When we speak of dialogue with the sovereign, it seems to me that this can be definitely initiated only on the basis of the greatest possible intransigence, for power today is completely alien to any real discussion. It is true that discussion is allowed within the system. But the quarrels between right and left seem to me completely futile, for in every possible way they simply lead to an enhancement of the power of the state. Democracy is a mere trap with the party system as it is and a bureaucracy that cannot be altered. Discussion may go on about taxes and the improvement of social services. But power is totally deaf to the individual, indifferent to the interests of freedom, and ignorant of the true concerns of the nation. Only a radical opposition, i.e., an attack on the root of the situation, can engage it in authentic dialogue.

Efficiency is a fact and justice a slogan.

Journalistic content is a technical complex expressly intended to adapt man to the machine.

We are in the process of seeing the fulfillment of Edgar Allan Poe's prophecy in which the painter, impassioned by his mistress-model and also by his art, "did not want to see that the colors he spread on his canvas were taken from the cheeks of the woman seated beside him. And when several weeks had passed, and very little remained to be done, nothing but a stroke on the mouth and a glaze over the eye, the mistress’s spirit still flickered like the flame at the base of a lamp. Then he put on the final touch, put the glaze in place, and for a moment the painter stood in ecstasy before the work he had finished. But a moment later, he was struck with panic, and shouting with a piercing voice: ‘It is truly Life itself,’ he suddenly turned around to look at his mistress. She was dead." Nothing ever constrains us to face what is dying when we see it so alive in our images.

The word, although prevalent in our day, has lost its reasoning value, and has value only as an accessory to images. In turn, the word actually evokes images. But it does not evoke the direct images related to my personal experience. Rather, it calls up images from the newspaper or television. The key words in our modern vocabulary, thanks to propaganda and advertising, are words that relate to visual reproduction. They are stripped of all rational content, so they evoke only visions that whisk us away to some enchanted universe. Saying "fascism," "progress," "science," or "justice" does not suggest any idea or produce any reflection. It only causes a fanfare of images to explode within us: a sort of fireworks of visual commonplaces, which link up very precisely with each other. These related images provide me with practical content: a common truth that is especially easy to swallow because the ready-made images that showed it to me had been digested in advance. Make no mistake here: this is how modern people usually think. We are arriving at a purely emotional stage of thinking.

We see first of all that leisure, instead of being a vacuum representing a break with society, is literally stuffed with technical mechanisms of compensation and integration. It is not a vacuous interval. It is not a human kind of emptiness in which decisions might be matured. Leisure time is a mechanized time and is exploited by techniques which, although different from those of man's ordinary work, are as invasive, exacting, and leave man no more free than labor itself.

The poorest population

The really poor cannot be subjected to integration propaganda because the immediate concern of daily life absorb all their capacities and efforts. To be sure, the poor can be pushed into rebellion, into to an explosion of violence; they can be subjected to agitation propaganda and excited to the point of theft and murder. But they cannot be trained by propaganda, kept to hand, channeled, or oriented.