Quotes About Manipulation

confidence men

Mistrust must be sown of the plutocratic ruling caste, and fear must be instilled of what is about to befall. All this must be laid on as thick as possible

We believe in the Führer's powers of divination. We know that anything which now seems to be going against us will turn out to be most fortunate for us in the end." Goebbels knew, of course

In this view, man is an energy-converting organism who must exert his manipulative powers, who must damage his world in some ways, who must make it uncomfortable for others, etc., by his own nature as an active being. He seeks self-expansion from a very uncertain power base. Even if man hurts others, it is because he is weak and afraid, not because he is confident and cruel. Rousseau summed up this point of view with the idea that only the strong person can be ethical, not the weak one.

It is this that makes people so willing 'to follow brash, strong-looking demagogues with tight jaws and loud voices: those who focus their measured words and their sharpened eyes in the intensity of hate, and so seem most capable of cleansing the world of the vague, the weak, the uncertain, the evil. Ah, to give oneself over to their direction—what calm, what relief.

Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book.

She's vicious,' Miss Stein said. 'She's truly vicious, so she can never be happy except with new people. She corrupts people.

How could a woman know that you meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth.

Lincoln almost got it right.  Sure you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Who cares!  All you really have to do is fool most of the people right before the election.

Il razionalismo moderno fa come gli struzzi: mette la testa sotto terra per nascondersi, e si ritiene soddisfatto se riesce a drogare milioni e milioni di uomini con le «istruzioni per l'uso»

Just dismissing them gave me a kind of power over them. That was the whole method of the con, even when I was conning myself. These

It's one thing to kill someone and not leave evidence or hide the body so it's never found, but to be able to murder someone and have everyone think it was an accident of nature? That's some kind of genius.

They've met a thousand liars and heard a million lies. Yours ain't gonna fly. They won't tell you that you're full of crap—they'll keep you talking, getting you to lie about a bunch of things, making notes in their head while you tell yourself that you're the most persuasive motherfucker on the planet. They want you to walk away thinking you got away with it, or so panicked you screw up in front of them.

A man who believes that a convincing lie can shape the cosmos in a way he sees fit may not have a problem erasing one or two inconvenient barriers in his path. Obstacles that happen to be sitting in his private jet.

One of his best techniques was buying off the clerks that handled the procedural work for judges. We found numerous examples of major cases that were dismissed or postponed because a clerk lost evidence or changed filings, creating procedural errors.

But being manipulative isn't necessarily a mark of intelligence. I mean, have you ever met a child?" she asks rhetorically.

You're one cold motherfucker. At least Mathis doesn't make you feel like shit." "That's so you don't see the knife coming. I'm honest.

He's a particular kind of sociopath. The kind that makes a great politician. He makes you think he loves you until you stand in his way. And then when he does something to fuck you over, he makes you think it's your fault." "And you know this from experience?

Cray, I've seen enough turkey shoots to know one when I see it. You set that little fucker up to dangle in the wind like a pro.

It wasn't just 'divide and conquer,'" said Kazikhanov. "It was 'divide, conquer, and tie up in trouble.

My God, I'm here to help these people screw the President of the United States.

Right from the beginning, I had the sense that whenever he was trying to convince Pin of something, he was really trying to convince himself.

Legislators redistrict all the time to achieve desired results. They group people together based on how they think they will vote. There is something fundamentally wrong with this tactic; it is unconstitutional, it is manipulative, it is patronizing, and it infringes upon all citizens' right to vote.

Hatred plays the same part in Government as acids in chemistry