Quotes About Manipulation

Wizard's First Rule: people are stupid." Richard and Kahlan frowned even more. "People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.

People would believe any lie, either because they wanted it to be true, or because they feared it was.

I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?' If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?

Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always - eventually - manages to spring back into its old familar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about, said the voice of Maurice. They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.

You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.

And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.

I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting Forward, brave comrades! you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing.

Well, he thought, so this is diplomacy. It's lying, only for a better class of people.

When they're laughing at you, their guard is down. When their guard is down, you can kick them in the fracas.

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word commence in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say Enter, don't stop to pack.

The truly smart, having discovered they are cleverer than the people around them, soon learn that the smartest thing of all for them to do is to prevent said people from ever finding this out.

Your power is only rumour and lies, she thought. You bore your way into people when they are uncertain and weak and worried and frightened, and they think their enemy is other people when their enemy is, and always will be, you – the master of lies. Outside, you are fearsome; inside, you are nothing but weakness.

Watering down the currency of expression, causing anything to mean whatever you want it to mean, until nothing is meant and nothing is precise.

What will you do?" said Susan. "Lie," said Lu-Tze happily. "It's amazing how often that works.

It's all trickery. They keep you down and when they piss off some other country, you have to fight for them! It's only your country when they want you to get killed!

The politics of wizardry were either very simple, and resolved by someone ceasing to breathe, or as complex as one ball of yarn in a room with three bright-eyed little kittens.

It was the heart of any scam or fiddle -- keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing.

There's the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is "Don't do what you will, do what I say.

Everyone had their levers. Often it was greed. Greed was a reliable old standby. Sometimes it was pride. That was Groat's lever. He desperately wanted promotion; you could see it in his eyes. Find the lever, and then it was plain sailing.

Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?