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. Adam Curtis Read Quote
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. Adam Curtis Read Quote
James Goldsmith is important because he used the power of the markets to break up the cosy patrician elite that ran Britain and its industries in the 1950s and ’60s. In the process, Goldsmith helped transfer power in this country away from politics and towards the markets and the financial sector. Adam Curtis Read Quote
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. Adam Curtis Read Quote
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. Adam Curtis Read Quote
Documentaries shouldn’t just reflect the world: they should try and explain why reality is like it is. Adam Curtis Read Quote
One of the guiding beliefs of our consuming age is that we are all free and independent individuals. That we can choose to do pretty much what we want, and if we can’t, then it’s bad. But at the same time, co-existing alongside this, there is a completely different, parallel universe where we all seem meekly to do what those in power tell us to do. Adam Curtis Read Quote
Tyler Kent himself is weird and mesmerising – but still unrepentantly anti-Semitic. Adam Curtis Read Quote
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. Adam Curtis Read Quote
