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Quotes About Manipulation

Julian and his team of copy-writers had noted that the phrase 'Lest we forget' had so far been reserved for fallen soldiers. In minutes they had created a viral post accusing 'crazed trans multi-cultural zealots' of claiming that a dead transsexual was as much an English hero as the fighter pilots who had died during the Battle of Britain. Malika's algorithms then swiftly sent the message to the people most likely to be annoyed by it.
~ Ben Elton
everybody thought that if only they could get in front of a camera they could show people the real them. Had they learned nothing from watching the very shows they aspired to be on? Could they not see that between them and the public whom they wished to influence stood the edit? And the edit would make of them what it pleased. It would not necessarily be brutal, it might as easily create a hero as a villain, but what it would never ever do was show anybody as they genuinely were.
~ Ben Elton
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders," Hermann Goering, the number two man in the Reich, once observed. "That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
~ Ben Fountain
In a way it's so easy, all he has to do is say what they want to hear and they're happy, they love him, everybody gets along. Sometimes he has to remind himself there's no dishonor in it. He hasn't told any lies, he doesn't exaggerate, yet so often he comes away from these encounters with the sleazy, gamey aftertaste of having lied.
~ Ben Fountain
This does it; they throw back their heads and roar. In a way it's so easy, all he has to do is say what they want to hear and they're happy, they love him, everybody gets along. Sometimes he has to remind himself there's no dishonor in it. He hasn't told any lies, he doesn't exaggerate, yet so often he comes away from these encounters with the sleazy, gamey aftertaste of having lied.
~ Ben Fountain
In a way it's so easy, all he has to do is say what they want to hear and they're happy, they love him, everybody gets along. Sometimes he has to remind himself there's no dishonor in it. He hasn't told any lies, he doesn't exaggerate, yet so often he comes away from these encounters with the sleazy, gamey aftertaste of having lied.
~ Ben Fountain
Bravo can laugh and feel somewhat superior because they know they're being used. Of course they do, manipulation is their air and element, for what is a soldier's job but to be the pawn of higher?
~ Ben Fountain
RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.
~ Ben Marcus
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted. —G. C. Lichtenberg
~ Benjamin Graham
The priests are like Offa," I said. "They want us to be their dogs, well schooled, grateful and obedient, and why? So they can get rich. They tell you pride is a sin? You're a man! It's like telling you breathing is a sin, and once they've made you feel guilty for daring to breathe, they'll give you absolution in return for a handful of silver.
~ Bernard Cornwell
If you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that thunder will deafen us, then one of those things will turn out to be true and you'll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.
~ Bernard Cornwell
Obadiah Hakeswill had never been concerned by such enmity. Power did not lie in being liked, but in being feared.
~ Bernard Cornwell
The art of war," I told him, "is to make the enemy do your bidding.
~ Bernard Cornwell
Merlino mi fissò. - Credi che tu, Derfel, o Artù possiate essere tanto forti da resistere a Nimue? Lei è una donna. Le donne ottengono sempre ciò che vogliono, e se per ottenerlo devono rovinare il mondo e tutto ciò che il mondo contiene, così sia.
~ Bernard Cornwell
You're to grovel." Æthelwold spoke for the first time. He grinned at me. We were not exactly friends, but we had drunk together often enough and he seemed to like me. "You're to dress like a girl," Æthelwold continued, "go on your knees and be humiliated." "And
~ Bernard Cornwell
Politics were so very simple, the Cardinal thought, just so long as a man believed no one, double-crossed everyone, kept a full treasury, and inveigled others into doing the dirty work.
~ Bernard Cornwell
If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it.
~ Bernard Cornwell
Your answer to the truth," I sneered, "is to threaten a woman with death?
~ Bernard Cornwell
The spinners were watching me, waiting, needles poised, and unless I did their bidding then my fate would be failure.
~ Bernard Cornwell
It was fate, I thought. Just fate. We think we control our own lives, but the gods play with us like children playing with straw dolls.
~ Bernard Cornwell
He liked to see men cowed and frightened, for that made them biddable, and Sergeant Hakeswill was always at his happiest when he was in control of unhappy men.
~ Bernard Cornwell
The art of war is to make the enemy do our bidding.
~ Bernard Cornwell
And so he lied because he can't speak the truth. His tongue is bent. He breaks oaths, my lady, and he swears black is white and white is black, and men believe him because he has honey on his bent tongue. But I know him, my lady, because he's my man, he's sworn to me." And with that I leaned down from the saddle and took hold of Haesten's mail coat, shirt, and cloak, and hauled him up. He
~ Bernard Cornwell
The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian.
~ Bernard Crick