Quotes About Manipulation

Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

Passive aggressors who are adept at this will have trained themselves to remain calm, while you get irritated and emotional.

Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.

Flattery in courtship is the highest insolence, for whilst it pretends to bestow on you more than you deserve, it is watching an opportunity to take from you what you really have.

Americans are big boys. You can talk them into almost anything. Just sit with them for half an hour over a bottle of whiskey and be a nice guy.

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.

The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.

To me, Stephen Miller is like Iago whispering in the president's ear, along with John Kelly. These people are totally anti-immigrant.

The Republicans always do a good job of dividing and conquering. They do a really good job of making black folks, poor white folks, and Hispanics not like each other.

Politicians talk themselves red, white, and blue in the face.

What does 'politicizing intelligence' mean? Using intel, or more often, partial intel, to produce an effect in line with White House policies rather than giving a full picture of a particular situation.

If you think the Obama White House and Ben Rhodes lying to the American people about Iran - and laughing about it - was bad, just wait until Hillary Clinton's spin doctors get hold of the media.

It must be remembered that the Bush White House has a separate talent for character assassination that must not be confused with a talent for governance.

I don't think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim.

All I ask is that you not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey.

Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price.

Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos.

Modi's masterstroke has always been to blur the battlelines and construct an artificial enemy one that plays into primal instincts of pride and insecurity.

A small number of people and groups control the Democratic primary.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Prime Minister, I see you've already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely, the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate.

Almost anything that can be praised or advocated has been put to some disgusting use. There is no principle, however immaculate, that has not had its compromising manipulator.

Anytime Facebook wants to change how it might use all that data about you, in any way, across any service it has within the Facebook ecosystem, all it has to do is change one privacy policy, tell you about it, and that's that.