Quotes About Manipulation

Do the two girls run around together? I think not. I think they go their separate and slightly divergent roads to perdition. Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless. Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies. Neither of them has any more moral sense than a cat. Neither have I. No Sternwood ever had. Proceed.

There is a hand behind every curtain,' " she quoted. " 'And a knife in every hand,' finished Mara.

Fear had driven two enemies into each other's arms and he smiled at that thought. 'They fear me more than they do each other and that is good' he thought.

And evil is most adept at seeing what it wants to see. That's its weakness. It doesn't anticipate the possibility of failure.

The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is.

The psychoanalyst picks our dreams as if they were our pockets." "The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is.

If we don't understand our tools, then there is a danger that we will become the tool of our tools

You can use the power of words to bury meaning or to excavate it.

One of the rights that the powerful often assume is the power to dictate reality.

Language is power. When you turn "torture" into "enhanced interrogation," or murdered children into "collateral damage," you break the power of language to convey meaning, to make us see, feel, and care. But it works both ways. You can use the power of words to bury meaning or to excavate it.

The premise was that people were sheep, except when they were wolves, and the solution was to find out how best to herd them. But the sociologists would stand all this on its head.

Language is power. When you turn "torture" into "enhanced interrogation," or murdered children into "collateral damage," you break the power of language to convey meaning, to make us see, feel, and care.

Told from the man's point of view, Vertigo is awash with romantic fog, but from the woman's perspective, it's about being forced to disappear— not from the top of a tower, but in everyday life as two successive lovers make her into someone else for their own ends, a common enough tragedy.

The great skill in lying is not lying, you'd say. Just leaving things out. Keeping everything as close to the actual truth as possible. Nothing overblown.

So what conclusions can we draw? Both sides quite possibly used sarin. Both sides lied and manipulated evidence. At a minimum, the Obama administration exaggerated its case to justify a military attack on Syria. At worst, the White House fabricated intelligence. Bottom line: no one has yet presented convincing evidence of who perpetrated the horrific Al Ghouta attack. But one thing remains clear: the Al Ghouta massacre changed US policy, and not in the way President Obama intended.

Second: the people can be made to behave as you want them to behave via the subconscious of the public mind—no one else believed such a thing existed—which can be directed with symbols and signs. "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind," asked Bernays, "is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

He described his grand strategy as indirection. If General Motors hired Joe Schmo to sell cars, Joe Schmo would give an interview to Road & Track, telling them the specs of the Thunderbird, engine size in cubic inches, zero-to-sixty, and so on. Given the same job, Bernays would lobby Congress for higher speed limits, making it more fun to own a Thunderbird. Rather than fight for a single season of sales, he would make the world more friendly to his product.

Bernays set various goals: convince the American people of the Communist presence in Guatemala; convince members of Congress the issue is a winner; convince the CIA, which can actually do something on the ground, it's time to act. Bernays wouldn't make the world better for bananas, he would make the world better for American politicians, who would make the world better for the CIA, which would make the world better for bananas. Indirection.

Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?

Ich war gerade nahe daran, zu erkennen, daß man jeden durchschauen kann, wenn man einen Knüppel oder Schraubenzieher hat, der groß genug ist.

So one might say that there was a second conspiracy to make it look like there was no conspiracy at first; and directed by a man who was apparently a major player in both!

fraud, by definition, requires deceit, something women are highly evolved at.

It is interesting to wonder whether taxonomists of the future may regret the way our generation messed around with genomes.

Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.