Quote of the Day:

"The Propaganda of the Faith is quite the largest, oldest, most  magnificent, most unabashed, and most lucrative enterprise in  sales-publicity in all Christendom.  Much is to be learned from it as regards media and suitable methods of approach, as well as  due perseverence, tact, and effrontery.  By contrast, the many secular adventures in salesmanship are no better than upstarts, raw recruits, late and slender capitalisations out of the ample fund of human credulity.  It is only quite recently, and even yet only with a dawning realisation of what may be achieved by consummate effrontery in the long run, that these others are beginning to take on anything like the same air of stately benevolence and menacing solemnity.

"No pronouncement on rubber-heels, soap-powders, lip-sticks, or yeast-cakes, not even Sapphira Buncombe's Vegetative Compound, are yet able to ignore material facts with the same magisterial detachment, and none has yet commanded the same unreasoning assent or acclamation.  None other have achieved that pitch of unabated assurance which has enabled the publicity-agents of the Faith to debar human reason from scrutinising their pronouncements.  These others are doing well enough, no doubt; perhaps as well as might reasonably be expected under the circumstances, but they are a feeble thing in comparison.  Saul has slain his thousands, perhaps, but David has slain his tens of thousands."

- Thorstein Veblen, in his book
Absentee Ownership - Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (1923).

Posted at 03:36 PM in Current Affairs, Philosophy, Religion | Permalink

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