List of Jacques Ellul Quotes

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 Falsified Democracy Of Bourgeois States). There Remains The Anarchism Which Acts By Means Of Persuasion, By The Creation Of Small Groups And Networks, Denouncing Falsehood And Oppression, Aiming At A True Overturning Of Authorities Of All Kinds As People At The Bottom Speak And Organize Themselves.

The Qualities Which Technique Requires For Its Advance Are Precisely Those Characteristics Of A Technical Order Which Do Not Represent Indivisual Intelligence...the Individual, In Order To Make Use Of Technical Instruments, No Longer Needs To Know About His Civilization.

In Point Of Fact There Are A Certain Number Of Values And Of Forces Which Are Of Decisive Importance In Our World Civilization: The Primacy Of Production, The Continual Growth Of The Power Of The State And The Formation Of The National State, The Autonomous Development Of Technics, Etc. These, Among Others - Far More Than The Ownership Of The Means Of Production Or Any Totalitarian Doctrine - Are The Constitutive Elements Of The Modern World. So Long As These Elements Continue To Be Taken For Granted, The World Is Standing Still.

And An Apprenticeship To Whatever Gadgetry Is Useful In A Technical World

I Describe A World With No Exit, Convinced That God Accompanies Man Throughout His History.

No Technique Is Possible When Men Are Free. Technique Requires Predictability And, No Less, Exactness Of Prediction. It Is Necessary, Then, That Technique Prevail Over The Human Being.

If Man--if Each One Of Us--abdicates His Responsibilities With Regard To Values; If Each One Of Us Limits Himself To Leading A Trivial Existence In A Technological Civilization, With Greater Adaptation And Increasing Success As His Sole Objectives; If We Do Not Even Consider The Possibility Of Making A Stand Against These Determinants, Then Everything Will Happen As I Have Described It, And The Determinates Will Be Transformed Into Inevitabilities.

The Individual, By Means Of The Discipline Imposed On Him By Sport, Not Only Plays And Finds Relaxation From The Various Compulsions To Which He Is Subjected, But Without Knowing It Trains Himself For New Compulsions. ... Training In Sports Makes Of The Individual An Efficient Piece Of Apparatus Which Is Henceforth Unacquainted With Anything But The Harsh Joys Of Exploiting His Body And Winning.

The Holy Spirit Alone Can Do This, The Holy Spirit Alone Can Establish This Link With One's Neighbor.

Philosophy Which Asserts That Human Experience Repeats Itself Is Ineffectual.

Sport Carries On Without Deviation The Mechanical Tradition Of Furnishing Relief And Distraction To The Worker After He Has Finished His Work Proper So That He Is At No Time Independent Of One Technique Or Another. In Sport The Citizen Of The Technical Society Finds The Same Spirit, Criteria, Morality, Actions And Objectives In Short, All The Technical Laws And Customs Which He Encounters In Office Or Factory.

It Is Not True That The Perfection Of Police Power Is The Result Of The State's Machiavellianism Or Of Some Transitory Influence. The Whole Structure Of Society Implies It, Of Necessity. The More We Mobilize The Forces Of Nature, The More Must We Mobilize Men And The More Do We Require Order.