#brainwash

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#children #marriage #marriage

I emphasise it now; I had little-to-nothing in common with other people. Their values I did not comprehend, their ideals were to me a living horror. Call it ostentatious but I even sought to provide tangible proof of my withdrawal from the world. I posted a sign in the entrance to the building wherein I dwelt; a sign that indicated I had no wish to be disturbed by anyone, for any purpose whatsoever. As these convictions took hold of me and, as I denied, nay even repudiated, the hold that the current society of men possesses over its ranks, as I retreated into a hermitage of the imagination, disentangling my own concerns from those paramount to the age in which I happened to be born, an age with no claim to be more enlightened, significant or progressive than any other, I tried to make a stand for the spirit. Tyranny, in this land, I was told, was dead. But I contend that the replacement of one form of tyranny with another is still tyranny. The secret police now operate not via the use of brute force in dark underground cells; they operate instead by a process of open brainwashing that is impossible to avoid altogether. The torture cells are not secret; they are everywhere, and so ubiquitous that they are no longer seen for what they are. One may abandon television; one may abandon all forms of broadcast media, even the Internet, but the advertising hoardings in every street, on vehicles, inside transport centres, are still there. And they contain the same messages. Only the very rich can avoid their clutches utterly. Those who have obtained sufficient wealth may choose their own surroundings, free from the propaganda of a decayed futurity. And yet, and yet, in order to obtain such a position of freedom it is first necessary to have served the ideals of the tyranny slavishly, thereby validating it. ("The Tower") ↗

— Mark Samuels

#advertisements #brainwashing #media #rich #society

To think because you have been “saved” that you are now sane is insanity. God doesn’t fix the mind. He only gives you opportunities to have moments of clarity. It is your job to climb the mountain and see above the clouds for yourself, not to believe the congregation's interpretation of the view. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#brainwashed #personal-truth #religion #seeking-god #testimony

It's nice that there are movies and songs about romance - it's what motivates us as human beings. I'm all for being brainwashed by rom-coms. ↗

— Zooey Deschanel

#being #beings #brainwashed #human #human beings

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed. ↗

— William Wiley

#basically #being #brainwashed #buried #dancers

The people that live in these districts, they don't want to watch it. They don't want to see their children die or killing other people. The only people that it is entertainment to are the people in the capital that have been brainwashed and are misguided and living in a completely unrealistic kind of world. ↗

— Liam Hemsworth

#brainwashed #capital #children #completely #die

For me, in the third book, when Peeta gets brainwashed by the Capitol, that's going to be fun to play. The rest of the time he's very much into Katniss, and for that to get turned around and to play it the other way, that's going to be very exciting. ↗

— Josh Hutcherson

#book #brainwashed #capitol #exciting #fun

African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view. I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it's just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple. ↗

— Herman Cain

#because #been #being #brainwashed #brainwashing

And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing. ↗

— Robert Jay Lifton

#arrange #both #brainwashing #china #chinese

I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies. ↗

— Walter Mosley

#been #black #brainwashed #completely #deep