Quotes About Manipulation

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

Like Machiavelli himself, he [Edward Luttwak] enjoys truth not only because it is true but also because it shocks the naive

Every man kills the things that he loves. Some with a look, some with flattery, the coward with a kiss.

Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.

The Nazis were anti-Christian, but they would pretend to be Christians as long as it served their purposes of getting theologically ignorant Germans on their side against the Jews.

Hitler presented himself as a man of moderation and peace, as someone devoted to the German people, and as someone who publicly claimed to be following "God's will." He promised to lead Germany out of the economic hell into which it had fallen, and to lift the deep shame that Germans felt at having lost the First World War.

twisting of the holiest and highest truth in the universe.

Hitler was moving ahead with his own plans for the church. He knew quite well how to deal with these Protestant pastors. "You can do anything you want with them," he once remarked. "They will submit . . . they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.

They would brilliantly co-opt the conservatives and the Christian churches, and when they had the power to do so, they would turn on them too.

Departments too often spend their energy learning how to use data to get what they want rather than as genuine feedback to guide their future actions.

Statistically, half of all humans are below median intelligence and easily led astray by the ten percent who combine above average intelligence with a defective sense of ethics.

To the novice, it doubtless seems a conundrum that lies can have their basis in fact. Consider, however, the individual's need to have his or her desires met. This is fact. If lies are clever enough to fulfill this desire, they become a truth and, therefore, that much harder to dispel.

Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.

Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

The aim of sadism is to transform a man into a thng, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life-freedom.

We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

The marvel of television is one means that is being used to try and turn society into a uniform mush. The manipulation and thought control inexorably continues. Mankind is being rinsed out into a group of dull moralists who convince themselves that they are "good people.

Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.

Sometimes, we have to find out : do we engage ourselves or are we embarked upon. Do we act willingly or are we naively manipulated. If it is our free choice, anyhow, we have to put "skin in the game." ( "A glimpse of the future" )

Imagine if one should drag an innocent passer-by from the street to the operating room of a nearby hospital and force him at gunpoint to perform a delicate operation. The man would burst into tears. However, if one were to ask him to sound off on problems such as nuclear experiments, Vietnam, the borders of Israel, support for Indonesia, aid to Latin America, or recognition of Red China, in most cases he would start spouting opinions.