Inspirational Quotes by Jacques Ellul

“Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization. Everything is its concern.”

“The man of today is no longer able to understand his neighbor because his profession is his whole life, and the technical specialization of this life has forced him to live in a closed universe.”

“Economic life, not in its content but in its direction, will henceforth entirely elude popular control. No democracy is possible in the face of a perfected economic technique. the decisions of the voters, and even of the elected, are oversimplified, incoherent, and technically inadmissible. It is a grave illusion to believe that democratic control or decision-making can be reconciled with economic technique.”

“La technique se développe de façon indépendante, en dehors de tout contrôle humain.”

“Faith has to come to birth as a free act, not a forced one. Otherwise it has no meaning.”

“The more you add to what you have, the less you are. Accumulating more, concentrating all your effort in the quest for things you can have, means losing your being in the process.... Being involves something different than the quest for having. Adding to what you have means losing your being.”

“First our desire for money is never satisfied. Our pursuit of money is infinite. We can never say: this is enough.... There is never any limit, since in order to set a limit or a stopping point, one would need self-control and wisdom. And if one had these at the outset, he would not have had such a passion for money.”

“And the extraordinary thing is that according to these texts all powers, all the power and glory of the kingdoms, all that has to do with politics and political authority, belongs to the devil. It has all been given to him and he gives it to whom he wills. Those who hold political power receive it from him and depend upon him. (It is astonishing that in the innumerable theological discussions of the legitimacy of political power, no one has ever adduced these texts! [Matthew 4:8-9; Luke 4:6-7]) This fact is no less important than the fact that Jesus rejects the devil's offer. Jesus does not say to the devil: It is not true. You do not have power over kingdoms and states. He does not dispute this claim. He refuses the offer of power because the devil demands that he should fall down before him. This is the sole point when he says: 'You shall worship the Lord your God and you shall serve him, only him' (Matthew 4:10). We may thus say that among Jesus' immediate followers and in the first Christian generation political authorities - what we call the state - belonged to the devil and those who held power received it from him.”

“That it is to be a dictatorship of test tubes rather than of hobnailed boots will not make it any less a dictatorship.”

“Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor have become mere entries in technique's filing cabinet.”

“Then there is the modern passion for nature. When it is not stockbrokers out after a moose, it is a crowd of brainless conformists camping out on order and as they are told. Nowhere is there any initiative or eccentricity.”

“This is the situation of all Christians. It is most acute for the laity, however, because for them in particular there is no separation from the world. They can have no illusions on this score. In the first place, they participate in the world through their work and concerns. The world constantly assails their very being. Claiming to be separate becomes more and more difficult, as each person is forced into a world that becomes more intrusive, crushing, and demanding than ever. Our occupations alone are enough today to absorb all of our resources. Each of us is drowning in overwhelming activity, leaving us no time to reflect, carry out our function as a Christian, or even live.”

“A first order of conclusions will likely appear even more abstract and difficult! It is that Christians must not judge, act, or live according to principles, but according to the reality of the eschaton, lived out here and now. This is exactly the opposite of a moralism.”

“No technique is possible when men are free.”

“Propaganda is necessarily false, when it speaks of values, of truth, of good, of justice, of happiness-and when it interprets and colors facts and imputes meaning to them. It is true when it serves up the plain fact, but does so only for the sake of establishing a pretense and only as an example of the interpretation that it supports with that fact.”

“La questione che vorrei abbozzare in questo libro è fra quelle che mi turbano più profondamente. Essa si contraddistingue per la sua drammatica e inconsueta rilevanza storica e perché, allo stato attuale delle mie conoscenze, mi sembra irrisolvibile. Nella maniera più semplice può essere così presentata: com’è possibile che lo sviluppo della società cristiana e della Chiesa abbia dato vita a una società, a una civiltà e a una cultura del tutto opposte a quanto si può leggere nella Bibbia”

“Humanism is antiquated and has given way to scientific and technological training because the environment in which the student will be immersed is, first of all, no longer a human, but a technological environment.”

“The first private clocks appeared in the sixteenth century. Thenceforward, time was an abstract measure separated from the traditional rhythms of life and nature.”

“Il ne peut pas y avoir un développement infini dans un univers fini.”

“La prévoyance commence lorsque nous acceptons que nous sommes maintenant arrivés à créés une civilisation du risque.”