Quotes About Manipulation

I don't think it takes much for a cult to be a cult. Many parts of our society are cultish, and you only need a charismatic leader and some teachings, and before you know it, you have a cult.

We are all, to some extent, actors. We act in order to get what we want and need from the world.

Congressmen had a use for their very own son of a bitch.

world run according to the Gospel of Richard Nixon, where good guys were always good no matter what they actually did, bad guys were always and everywhere ontologically evil, and no one will be safe until " 'we' crack down on 'them,' occasionally adopting their tactics.

WIDESPREAD EVIL ALWAYS HAS ITS ROOTS IN WIDESPREAD DECEPTION

these leaders were promoting was a twisted version of truth. It was error packaged with elements of truth and then stealthily posed to believers in the guise of authenticity to make it more appetizing.

Something was going on here, something that wasn't right. It was almost like the killer was lobbing grenades at her with clues pointing to different suspects. Was that part of his game?

Love is giving up control. It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

Another problem arises if we work with technique: we work with something which is manipulating the mind, whereas the purpose of meditation is to release the grasping action of the mind so that the inherently enlightened qualities can manifest.

Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon. Moses used it like a master. Coupled with his overpowering personality, a buffet often did as much for a proposal as a bribe.

They're really not trying to protect anyone from harm, they're just trying to keep their world smooth and under control. I

Things mechanical are like the ladies,' continued Toby. 'You need to understand their ways. If you understand them, they'll do what you want from the start. If you don't, they've got you. And then God help you.

Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.

Reality is what you can get away with.

Apparently we have such an automatically positive reaction to compliments that we can fall victim to someone who uses them in an obvious attempt to win our favor.

audiences have been successfully manipulated by those who use social evidence, even when that evidence has been openly falsified.

The second important thing to understand is that we, too, have our preprogrammed tapes; and, although they usually work to our advantage, the trigger features that activate them can be used to dupe us into playing them at the wrong times.

once a person's self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit that new image.

The press may not be successful most of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling them what to think about.

You use your cuts to get people to swing attention to the parts of your message you really want them to focus on.

The principles—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity

patsy. For as long as I can recall, I've been an easy mark

the world abounds with cults populated by dependent people who are led by a charismatic figure.

That is, the car salespeople I observed threw the low-ball by proposing sweet deals, getting favorable decisions as a result, and then taking away the sweet part of the offers.