John Pilger Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The U.S. is a cosmetic democracy.

  John Pilger

  Democracy, Cosmetics

  13 Copy quote

• Whenever a journalist says to me, "Oh, you don't understand, I'm impartial, I'm objective," I know what he's saying. I can decode it immediately. It means he channels the official truth. Almost always. That protestation means he speaks for a consensual view of the establishment. This is internalized.

  John Pilger

  Mean, Views, Speak

  Source: progressive.org

  18 Copy quote

• The Palestinians don't have oil. If they were the Saudis, they wouldn't be in the position they are now. But they have the power of being able to upset the imperial order in the Middle East.

  John Pilger

  Order, Oil, Upset

  Source: progressive.org

  8 Copy quote

• If development was measured not by gross national product, but a society's success in meeting the basic needs of its people, Vietnam would have been a model. That was its real "threat." From the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to 1972, primary and secondary school enrollment in the North increased sevenfold, from 700,000 to almost five million. In 1980, UNESCO estimated a literacy rate of 90 percent and school enrollment among the highest in Asia and throughout the Third World.

  John Pilger

  Real, School, People

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• An elite group of less than a billion people now take more than 80 per cent of the world's wealth.

  John Pilger

  People, Groups, World

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• Two increasing themes which appear to dominate our listening, reading and watching lives are propaganda and 'national security', or manufactured war.

  John Pilger

  War, Reading, Two

  20 Copy quote

• Al journalism should be investigative, from football to cookery

  John Pilger

  Football, Als, Journalism

  9 Copy quote

• There is no war on terrorism; it is the great game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all.

  John Pilger

  War, Games, Differences

  "The great charade". www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2002.

  16 Copy quote

• When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience.

  John Pilger

  Believe, Government, Use

  "This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. November 13, 2005.

  18 Copy quote

• In these surreal days, there is one truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America last week and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else.

  John Pilger

  America, People, Lasts

  "Blair has made Britain a target" by John Pilger, www.theguardian.com. September 21, 2001.

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• Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.

  John Pilger

  Writing, Reality, Looks

  Interview with David Barsamian, progressive.org. July 16, 2007.

  13 Copy quote

• Who are these evil ones? In 1984, the evil one was called Goldstein. Orwell was writing a grim parody. But these people running the United States mean what they say. If I were a teacher, I would recommend that all my students very hurriedly read most of Orwell's books, especially 1984 and Animal Farm, because then they'd begin to understand the world we live in.

  John Pilger

  Running, Teacher, Book

  Source: progressive.org

  19 Copy quote

• The censorship is such on television in the U.S. that films like mine don't stand a chance.

  John Pilger

  Television, Chance, Censorship

  Interview with David Barsamian, progressive.org. July 16, 2007.

  13 Copy quote

• Iraq has been successfully demonized as if everybody who lives there is Saddam Hussein. In the build-up to this attack on Iraq, journalists have almost universally excluded the prospect of civilian deaths, the numbers of people who would die, because those people don't matter.

  John Pilger

  Iraq, Numbers, People

  Source: progressive.org

  6 Copy quote

• What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed.

  John Pilger

  Pot, Kissinger

  Collected in DistantVoices (1992).

  14 Copy quote

• Classic nineteenth century European imperialists believed they were literally on a mission. I don't believe that the imperialists these days have that same sense of public service. They are simply pirates. Yes, there are fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, who appear to be in charge of the White House at the moment, but they are very different from the Christian gentlemen who ran the British Empire and believed they were doing good works around the world. These days it's about naked power.

  John Pilger

  Christian, Believe, White

  Source: progressive.org

  11 Copy quote

• When the invasion began, the British public was called upon to 'support' troops sent illegally and undemocratically to kill people with whom we had no quarrel. 'The ultimate test of our professionalism' is how Commander McKendrick describes an unprovoked attack on a nation with no submarines, no navy and no air force, and now with no clean water and no electricity and, in many hospitals, no anaesthetic with which to amputate small limbs shredded by shrapnel. I have seen elsewhere how this is done, with a gag in the patient's mouth.

  John Pilger

  Usa, Iraq, Air

  9 Copy quote

• Using the passive voice is always very helpful. Mind you, a lot of that propaganda English emanates from here. The British establishment has always used the passive voice. It's been a weapon of discourse so those who committed terrible acts in the old empire could not be identified.

  John Pilger

  Passive Voice, Mind, Weapons

  Source: progressive.org

  7 Copy quote

• The British Labour Party has always had a very strong "Atlanticist component," with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action. I've never known a situation like it.

  John Pilger

  Strong, Military, Party

  Source: progressive.org

  5 Copy quote

• I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.

  John Pilger

  Winning, Two, Pockets

  "This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. November 13, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• Vietnam was as much a laboratory experiment as a war.

  John Pilger

  War, Vietnam, Experiments

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• British establishment uses "the royal we," as in, "We think this." You hear a lot of that these days. It erroneously suggests that those who are making the decisions to bomb countries, to devastate economies, to take part in acts of international piracy involve all of us.

  John Pilger

  Country, Thinking, Decision

  Source: progressive.org

  9 Copy quote

• This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we dont try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now.

  John Pilger

  Song, Children, Clever

  John Pilger (2003). “The New Rulers of the World”, p.10, Verso

  6 Copy quote

• The Mirror has become an important antidote to a media that is, most of it, supportive of the establishment, some of it quite rabidly rightwing. The Mirror is breaking ranks, and that's good news.

  John Pilger

  Mirrors, Media, Supportive

  Source: progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

• We have an extreme rightwing government in Britain, although it's called the Labour government. That's confused a lot of people, but it's confusing them less and less.

  John Pilger

  Confused, Government, People

  Source: progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

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