But propaganda is extremely weak, as is shown by its failure after forty-four years to convert people in the Eastern bloc to communism. Illusion requires incessant repetition in order to mimic the appearance of reality. Propaganda works only through constant reiteration. It is only in quantity that corrupt values, false perceptions, and bogus facts can be sold. Truth, by contrast, though its lot is never easy, makes its way with but a few friends, or even a single utterance. It does not need the apparatus of salesmanship, because reality itself is waiting to confirm it. Hence the power of the beleaguered prophet, or the mothers of the “disappeared” demonstrating daily in Argentina or El Salvador, or the witnesses by the tracks where the White Train carried nuclear explosives to Trident submarine bases: normal people with no economic stake never choose to suffer this much just to lie.

Walter Wink, Future of Freedom Foundation