The lie, the perfect lie, about people we know, about the relations we have had with them, about our motive for some action, formulated in totally different terms, the lie as to what we are, whom we love, what we feel with regard to people who love us... -- that lie is one of the few things in the world that can open windows for us on to what is new and unknown, that can awaken in us sleeping senses for the contemplation of universes that otherwise we should never have known.
Proust,The Captive
By devoting serious attention to the mass media, communications scholars were among the first members of the academy to question the sanctity of the elite cultural canon. In fact, I would argue that the status of communications study within the American academy suffered for years—and probably still does—from our association with mass culture.
Larry Gross, "Fastening Our Seatbelts:Turning Crisis into Opportunity"
The men of the press, who despised their own profession, did not know why there were enjoying it today. One of them, a young man with years of notorious success behind him a cynical look of twice his age, said suddenly, “I know what I’d like to be: I wish I could be a man who covers news!”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
We have designed our civilization based on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.
Carl Sagan