Jacques Ellul World Quotations

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.

Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers, we’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world.

Again I want to emphasize that the study of propaganda must be conducted within the context of a technological society. Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world.

The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and we must so act that it cannot take place.

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

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.

I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history .

What we are witnessing at the moment is a rearrangement of the world in an intermediate stage; the change is not in the use of a natural force but in the application of technique to all spheres of life.