Quotes About Manipulation

Every person can be manipulated—and all of us are, in one manner or another. —wisdom of the Cogitors

We avoid what we do not wish to see; we are deaf to what we do not wish to hear; we ignore what we do not wish to know. We are masters of self-deception, of manipulating our perceptions. —Bene Gesserit summation, Wallach IX archives

The blood of innocents has always been the currency of charismatic leaders.

Power and deceit are tools of statecraft, yes. But remember that power deludes the ones who wield it—making them believe it can overcome the defects of their ignorance. —COUNT FLAMBERT MUTELLI, early speech in Landsraad Hall of Oratory

threat works only if the recipient believes you are willing to carry through with it. —REVEREND MOTHER RAQUELLA BERTO-ANIRUL

There are rules, but people invariably find ways of getting around them. So it is with laws. A true leader must understand such things and be prepared to take advantage of each situation.

When the shepherd is a wolf, the flock becomes only so much meat.

Increasingly power functions by manipulating that affective dimension rather than dictating proper or normal behaviour from on high. So power is no longer fundamentally normative, like it was in its disciplinary forms, it's affective. The

The real purpose of friendship was to discover and exploit weakness in others.

If you think he's supposed to be different from what he is, you don't love him. In that moment you love who he's going to be when you're through manipulating him. He is a throwaway until he matches your image of him.

Satan's chief tactic is deception" and he does it "by telling people lies about God

Poetry and advertising (the basest mode of which is propaganda) are in direct and total opposition. If you do not use language you are used by it.

I believe the word used wrongly distorts the world.

I could kidnap your mother," he offered. "If you need the phone records explained.

You must never call your enemy by a name you choose for him. "Instead you must call him by the name he calls himself. What he chooses will reflect his pride; it will reveal his desires. But what you choose to call him will reveal your fears, which should be kept to yourself, lest your enemy find the way to exploit them.

I've always thought there are two ways of getting what you wanted in life.Forcing people to give it to you,or making them want to give it to you.

Why do magazines do this to women? It's all about creating insecurity. Trying to make women feel like they're not good enough. And when women don't feel like they're good enough, guess what? Men win. That's how they keep us down.

We'll then, Enjd said. What's the problem? This, Mindy said. She opened her hand and held up a tiny green plastic toy solider thrusting a bayonet. I don't understand, Enid said. This morning, when I opened my door to get the newspaper, I found a whole troop of them arranged on the mat. And you think Paul Rice did it, Enid said skeptically. I don't think he did it. I know he did it, Mindy said. He told me if I didn't approve his air conditioners, it was war...

The abiding characteristic of this administration is that it lies.

I'm sure I'll hear from Daddy, soon as he needs his laundry done. That's the usual program. He's the king of fake tears and phony apologies.

Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.

To make a contented slave,' [Frederick] Bailey later wrote, 'it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.' This is why the slaveholders must control what slaves hear and see and think. This is why reading and critical thinking are dangerous, indeed subversive, in an unjust society.

two chimpanzees were observed maltreating a chicken: One would extend some food to the fowl, encouraging it to approach; whereupon the other would thrust at it with a piece of wire it had concealed behind its back. The chicken would retreat but soon allow itself to approach once again--and be beaten once again. Here is a fine combination of behavior sometimes thought to be uniquely human: cooperation, planning a future course of action, deception and cruelty.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.