Jacques Ellul

Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it.

— Jacques Ellul

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

— Jacques Ellul

Technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Death, procreation, birth all submit to technical efficiency and systemization.

— Jacques Ellul

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

— Jacques Ellul

Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.

— Jacques Ellul

The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.

— Jacques Ellul

I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.

— Jacques Ellul

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

— Jacques Ellul

We have to admit that there is an immeasurable distance between all that we read in the Bible and the practice of…

— Jacques Ellul

Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on…

— Jacques Ellul

It is the multiplication of men who are exluded from working which provokes war. We ought at least to bear this in…

— Jacques Ellul

Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no…

— Jacques Ellul

This is where each individual must decide for himself. The essential thing is the decision to challenge the modern state, which without…

— 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

All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is…

— Jacques Ellul

There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in…

— Jacques Ellul

It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence.…

— Jacques Ellul

Propaganda tries first of all to create conditioned reflexes in the individual so that certain words, signs, or symbols, even certain persons…

— Jacques Ellul

According to the International Institute for Environment and Development, the annual amount spent globally on advertising aimed at increasing consumption topped $430…

— Jacques Ellul

We are not to make the Torah into God Himself, nor the Bible into a "paper pope." The Bible is only the…

— Jacques Ellul

Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda - not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all…

— Jacques Ellul

Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work…

— Jacques Ellul

Again I want to emphasize that the study of propaganda must be conducted within the context of a technological society. Propaganda is…

— Jacques Ellul

Propaganda must not concern itself with what is best in man - the highest goals humanity sets for itself, its noblest and…

— Jacques Ellul

“No society can last in conditions of anarchy. This is self-evident and I am in full agreement. But my aim is not…

— Jacques Ellul

Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any…

— Jacques Ellul

Totalitarianism extends to whatever touches it...psychological technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial plant, entails a direct…

— Jacques Ellul

I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an…

— Jacques Ellul

And an apprenticeship to whatever gadgetry is useful in a technical world

— Jacques Ellul

The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself.

— Jacques Ellul

The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.

— Jacques Ellul

“[Politics] is always a means of conquering others and exercising power over them.”

— Jacques Ellul

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

— Jacques Ellul

“Faith has to come to birth as a free act, not a forced one. Otherwise it has no meaning.”

— Jacques Ellul

God is not an encyclopedia whose task it is to satisfy our curiosity.

— Jacques Ellul

The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at…

— Jacques Ellul

Almost always, it is the conviction that 'I am right' or 'my cause is the cause of justice' that triggers violence. That…

— Jacques Ellul

Human life as a whole is not inundated by technique. It has room for activities that are not rationally or systematically ordered.…

— Jacques Ellul

Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined…

— Jacques Ellul

No technique is possible when men are free. Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that…

— Jacques Ellul