Quotes About Manipulation

Representative Leo J. Ryan understood the manipulation phenomena people were describing to him and he lost his life in a Guyanese jungle investigating how Jim Jones "bent minds.

Thinking that being a good, decent, respectable person will mean that others will see you as weak, vulnerable, and easy to manipulate.

As the writer you are the puppet-master and can control everything. Believe me, that is a whole lot of fun because it ain't something that's going to be happening very often in real life!

But although life is not energy, any more than it is matter, yet it directs energy and thereby controls arrangements of matter.

People that were in my life for a long time turned sinister and tried to control me, and all kinds of weird stuff happened. But there was no conscience involved; that threw me more than anything.

You'll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you're still the one in control.

You're scared of what you can't control

We're all as susceptible to the lure of power.

All our advertising is propaganda, of course, but it has become so much a part of our life, is so pervasive, that we just don't know what it is propaganda for.

Life is deceitful because all warfare is based on deception.

Through . . . lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. . . . Lies become an inhibitor in your relationship . . . .

Advertising signs: they con you into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on all around you

Having redefined "success" as the achievement of dramatic technological progress and in general the manipulation of nature to achieve human ends, they essentially won a game the Scholastics were not trying to play in the first place.

Jarrett favored "the Chicago Way." Let Obama pat Clinton on the back so he would know later where to stick the knife.

In politics, you either eat the baby or you are the baby.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.

No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.

Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda.

The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.

It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.

Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious of it. High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the entire enterprise.

Bernays's tone is managerial, not millenarian, nor does he promise that his methodology will turn this world into a modern paradise. His vision seems quite modest. The world informed by "public relations" will be but "a smoothly functioning society," where all of us are guided imperceptibly throughout our lives by a benign elite of rational manipulators.

It is a sort of managerial aristocracy that quietly determines what we buy and how we vote and what we deem as good or bad. "They govern us," the author writes, "by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure.