Explore Quotes by Jacques Ellul

For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived.

The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation.

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

All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.

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

In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act.

The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment.

Fate operates when people give up

When God picks out a man and speaks to him, it is to engage him in a work, an action. Nowhere in Scripture do we find indeterminate or purely mystical vocation.

For in a civilization which has lost the meaning of life, the most important thing a Christian can do is to live, and life, understood from the point of view of faith, has an extraordinary explosive force.

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

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

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

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

Enclosed within his artificial creation, man finds that there is “no exit”; that he cannot pierce the shell of technology again to find the ancient milieu to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years . In our cities there is no more day or night or heat or cold. But there is overpopulation, thralldom to press and television, total absence of purpose. All men are constrained by means external to them to ends equally external. The further the technical mechanism develops that allows us to escape natural necessity, the more we are subjected to artificial technical necessities.

Education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians.

Am I a pessimist? Not at all. I am convinced that the history of the human race, no matter how tragic, will ultimately lead to the Kingdom of God. I am convinced that all the works of humankind will be reintegrated in the work of God, and that each of us, no matter how sinful, will ultimately be saved.

Everyone has been taught that technique is an application of science.... This traditional view is radically false. It takes into account only a single category of science and only a short period of time

When there is propaganda, we are no longer able to evaluate certain questions, or even to discuss them

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