The emotional quality of what we moderns call our thought produces an extreme violence of conviction combined with extreme incoherence in our argumen… - Jacques Ellul

For the Greeks, physical exercise was an ethic for developing freely and harmoniously the form and strength of the human body. For the Romans, it was a technique for increasing the legionnaire's efficiency. The Roman conception prevails today.

Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda — not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all others, but at least a partial one: Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.

To be effective, propaganda must constantly short-circuit all thought and decision. It must operate on the individual at the level of the unconscious. He must not know that he is being shaped by outside forces...but some central core in him must be reached in order to release the mechanism in the unconscious which will provide the appropriate - and expected - action.