Adam Curtis Quotes

"Sometimes history repeats itself. And sometimes it doesn't."

"Things come and go in the news cycle like waves of fever."

"I have a suspicion that the politicians' revival of the old behaviourist ideas and techniques will be helped and reinforced by a powerful ally - the machines we have built. The computers."

"We live in a time when all elites, whether on the left or the right, believe in rigid rules that say there is no alternative to the present political and economic system."

"Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks."

"'American Honey' takes you into the feelings of a girl travelling through the United States while giddily in love. You see modern America through her intense feelings. But again and again the film pulls the rug out from under your feet - scenes never play out as you expect."

"Both individuals and societies tell themselves stories to simplify and make sense of the messy chaos of reality."

"Henrietta Lacks' cells are immortal. They are known as the HeLa cell line, and they have become deeply involved in all sorts of medical and genetic research - sometimes in the most unexpected ways."

"Documentaries shouldn't just reflect the world: they should try and explain why reality is like it is."

"At its heart, 'South Park' has a touching faith in human beings: that despite their absurdities and flaws, people have the capacity to create a better world."

"When communism collapsed in 1989, the big story that had been hardwired into citizens of western countries - that of the global battle against a distant dark and evil force - came to an abrupt end."

"One of the main functions of politicians - and journalists - is to simplify the world for us."

"Tony Blair believed in a consumerist idea of democracy."

"Tyler Kent was a horrible man. He was a rabid anti-communist who believed that the Jews had been behind the Russian Revolution."

"Tyler Kent himself is weird and mesmerising - but still unrepentantly anti-Semitic."

"The latest rule is: you cannot have protectionism - otherwise you will get a world war. Other rules say you cannot have collective ideas that involve the surrender of the individual to the group - otherwise, you get totalitarianism or, even worse, religion."

"Everyone goes on holiday in Britain. Even Hell's Angels."

"In 'Mad Men,' we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck."

"BP is accused of destroying the wildlife and coastline of America, but if you look back into history, you find that BP did something even worse to America. They gave the world Ayatollah Khomeini."

"Of course there are many factors that led to the Iranian revolution, but back in 1951, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company - which would later become BP - and its principal owner, the British government, conspired to destroy democracy and install a western-controlled regime in Iran."

"I have always been fascinated by the story of Henrietta Lacks."

"As well as our relationship with Afghanistan, I am researching the legacy of other European empires - in Africa. We think of those empires as history, but actually, they still haunt our everyday lives in the strangest of ways."

"In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border, everyone talks about the enemy - IS - and the frightening ideas that drive them. No one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them."

"Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories, and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated."

"There is a lurking sense that there is a kind of seedy corruption underlying a lot of public life today. But while journalism does a very good job of describing that corruption, it is failing to bring it into a bigger focus. To explain what it is all about."

"Journalists, whose job is to pull back and tell dramatic stories that bring power into focus, find it impossible because things like economic theory are both incomprehensible and, above all, boring. The same is true of 'management science.'"

"The problem with wonks is that they can't deal with emotion and feeling, and they don't like stories. It means that they cannot connect at all with the feelings and imaginations of the voters."

"A conveyor belt of Think Tank pundits and allied operatives poured into the TV studios, and together they built a fortress around Mrs. Thatcher's memory that was rooted in theories about economics. They did this because economics is the only language that wonks understand."

"Back in the 1950s, America set out to intervene in Syria, liberate the people from a corrupt elite, and bring about a new democracy. They did this with the best of intentions, but it led to disaster. And out of that disaster, the Assad regime rose to power."

"In many cruise ships, there are hundreds of workers from some of the poorest countries on earth who are paid minute amounts of actual wages - sometimes less than two dollars a day - to attend to the passengers' needs."