"Opinion itself, through modifications and elaboration, can transform into propaganda what in the beginning was information." - Jacques Ellul

"The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.

The pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his infancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual error. He resembles a child destitute of experience, full of ideal notions - a dangerous leaven mixes itself with all his knowledge - it is of necessity obscure, it is vacillating and false:

He takes the tone of his ideas on the authority of others,
who are themselves in error, or else have an interest in deceiving him.

Man seeks to range out of his sphere: notwithstanding the reiterated checks his ambitious folly experiences, he still attempts the impossible; strives to carry his researches beyond the visible world; and hunts out misery in imaginary regions. He would be a metaphysician before he has become a practical philosopher. He quits the contemplation of realities to meditate on chimeras. He neglects experience to feed on conjecture, to indulge in hypothesis. He dares not cultivate his reason, because from his earliest days he has been taught to consider it criminal.

The most important of our duties, then, is to seek means by which we may destroy delusions that can never do more than mislead us. The remedies for these evils must be sought for in Nature herself; it is only in the abundance of her resources, that we can rationally expect to find antidotes to the mischiefs brought upon us by an ill directed, overpowering blind enthusiasm."
- Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach

"To attain complete truth is not given to mortals, but to advance toward it by successive steps is not impossible. On any matter of general interest, there is usually, in any given community at any given time, a received opinion, which is accepted as a matter of course by all who give no special thought to the matter. Any questioning of the received opinion rouses hostility, for a number of reasons. The most important of these is the instinct of conventionality, which exists in all gregarious animals and often leads them to put to death any markedly peculiar member of the herd." - Bertrand Russell

"Always entertain opinions with some measure of doubt and do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." - Bertrand Russell

"In the American media system, editorializing is theoretically positioned on the editorial pages, thus giving the reader the false sense of security that opinions and persuasion are not part of the regular news. Since the onslaught of twenty-four-hour cable news programs and increased competition for the public's attention both in print and broadcast, the American media system is embedding facts with opinions and placing editorial comments and news analyses on the front page." - Nancy Snow

"Fueled by tax-deductible donations and an explosion in philanthropic assets, think tanks have dramatically grown in size and influence during the past 100 years. American think tanks increased in number from eight in 1910 to 98 in 1960 and 1,106 in 2006. Despite think tanks' billions of dollars of tax subsidies and considerable power, they have received minimal public scrutiny and are often poorly understood." - J.H. Snider, think tank fellow

"I landed a job as executive director of a policy organization in Washington. This felt like a coup. But certain perversities became apparent as I settled into the job. It sometimes required me to reason backward, from desired conclusion to suitable premise." - Matthew B. Crawford

"The lobbyists I met at Cassidy & Associates and APCO were more than eager to help out. In exchange for fees of up to $1.5 million a year they offered to send congressional delegations to Turkmenistan and write and plant opinion pieces in newspapers under the names of academics and think tank experts they would recruit." - Ken Silverstein

"The term intellectual is used generally to refer to people with privilege and access to resources who engage in commentary on human affairs. It does not necessarily correlate with insight or understanding. In general, privilege confers responsibility: in particular, responsibility to seek the truth and to meet ethical standards.

History reveals that, by and large, intellectuals have been servants of power, radically violating these responsibilities. There are always independent minds that confront the crimes of the powerful and seek to support the victims. They are usually punished in one or another way, depending on the nature of the society. That pattern goes back to the earliest historical records, and persists with rare exceptions, as is easily shown." - Noam Chomsky