“The ultimate target is the human mind.   It may be ‘changed’, it may be rendered impotent for expression or it may be extinguished, bit it still remains the critical target”
USAID REPORT, 1963
Notes on Strategic Hamlets, USOM, Saigon, Office of Rural Affairs, May 1963; cited by Richard White, the Morass, (Harper & Row, 1984), 114
Turning the Tide, US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace,
Noam Chomsky
South End Press, 1985. p. 30

The conscience and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits of the masses is an important element of in democratic society...it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically.   In the active proselytizing of minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of America.
Edward Bernays, cir 1920's, Served on the government propaganda commission during WWI.
Turning the Tide, US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace,
Noam Chomsky                       
South End Press, 1985 p. 235

"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine.  Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda

The special importance of propaganda in what Walter Lippmann referred to as the "manufacture of consent" has long been recognized by writers on public opinion, propaganda, and the political requirements of social order.  Lippmann himself, writing in the early 1920s, claimed that propaganda had already become "a regular organ of popular government," and was steadily increasing in sophistication and importance.   We do not contend that this is all the mass media do, but we believe the propaganda function to be a very important aspect of their overall service.
Manufacturing Consent, preface, pg xi,
Noam  Chomsky

Henry Louis Mencken
(1880 - 1956)