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

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

— Jacques Ellul

The machine is a tool. But it is not a neutral tool. We are deeply influenced by the machine while using it.

— Jacques Ellul

The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and…

— Jacques Ellul

Fate operates when people give up

— 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

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

— Jacques Ellul

People think that they have no right to judge a fact - all they have to do is to accept it. Thus…

— Jacques Ellul

“Propaganda begins when dialogue ends. (Quoted by Marshall McLuhan in McLuhan Hot & Cool)”

— Jacques Ellul

If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, moral, and anti-democratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the…

— 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

Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.

— Jacques Ellul

When God picks out a man and speaks to him, it is to engage him in a work, an action. Nowhere in…

— Jacques Ellul

Because of the myth of progress, it is much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight-edged one.

— Jacques Ellul

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

— Jacques Ellul

Am I a pessimist? Not at all. I am convinced that the history of the human race, no matter how tragic, will…

— Jacques Ellul

For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I…

— Jacques Ellul

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

— Jacques Ellul

Propaganda's content increasingly resembles information. It has even clearly been proved that a violent, excessive, shock-provoking propaganda texts leads ultimately to less…

— Jacques Ellul

In reality this is the very reverse of what we are told about the biblical God, who opens up freedom for us,…

— 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

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

— Jacques Ellul

For in a civilization which has lost the meaning of life, the most important thing a Christian can do is to live,…

— 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