Quotes About Manipulation

Power is a game—this cannot be repeated too often—and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effect of their actions.

Trata de persuadir a una persona apelando a su conciencia, diciendo lo que quieres, mostrando todas tus cartas, ¿y qué esperanza te queda? Serás sólo una irritación más por eliminar.

Keep withdrawing, surprising, and stimulating the chase. As long as you do, you have the power.

An understanding of people's hidden motives is the single greatest piece of knowledge you can have in acquiring power.

He increasingly spoke of himself in the third person, as if he had become an impersonal revolutionary force, and as such he was infallible. If he happened to mispronounce a word in a speech, every subsequent speaker from then on would have to pronounce it that way. "If I'd said it right," confessed one of his top lieutenants, "Stalin would have felt I was correcting him." And that could prove suicidal.

entre más se relaje el objetivo, más fácil te será inclinarlo a tu voluntad.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelop them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

When your own reputation is solid, use subtler tactics, such as satire and ridicule, to weaken your opponent while making you out as a charming rogue.

The Laws will teach you how to identify these types in advance, which is your greatest defense against them.

Los débiles siempre se benefician con las luchas entre los poderosos".

In searching, as you must, for the methods that will gain you the most power for the least effort, you will find the creation of a cultlike following one of the most effective.

People feel superior to the person whose actions they can predict. If you show them who is in control by playing against their expectations, you both gain their respect and tighten your hold on their fleeting attention.

If you yearn for power, quickly lay honesty aside, and train yourself in the art of concealing your intentions.

you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals just not your real ones. You will kill three birds with one stone: you appear friendly, open, and trusting; you conceal your intentions; and you send your rivals on time-consuming wild-goose chases.

Use this tactic in the following manner: Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals—just not your real ones. You will kill three birds with one stone: You appear friendly, open, and trusting; you conceal your intentions; and you send your rivals on time-consuming wild-goose chases.

Robert Greene

When you hold yourself back, you incur not anger but a kind of respect. You instantly seem powerful because you make yourself un-graspable, rather than succumbing to the group, or to the relationship, as most people do. As your reputation for independence grows, more and more people will come to desire you, wanting to be the one who gets you to commit. The moment you commit, the magic is gone. You become like everyone else. People will try all kinds of underhanded methods to get you to commit.

If the scapegoat appears too weak and his punishment too cruel, you may end up the victim of your own device.

Playing with appearances and mastering arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.

Rather than flattering Louis XIV, Fouquet's elaborate party offended the king's vanity. Louis would not admit this to anyone, of course—instead, he found a convenient excuse to rid himself of a man who had inadvertently made him feel insecure. Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the master's sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his pre-eminence.

la esencia de la coqueta no radica en el señuelo y la tentación, sino en la posterior marcha atrás, la reticencia emocional. Ésta es la clave del deseo esclavizador.

By training yourself to be indirect, you can thrive in the modern court, appearing the paragon of decency while being the consummate manipulator.

Your enemies, on the other hand, are an untapped gold mine that you must learn to exploit.