Quotes About Manipulation

Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

History is important. If you don't know history, it's as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, those in power can tell you anything and you have no way of checking up on it.

Nobody can force you to smile, she says. -What? I ask. But I know she's not even talking to me, only to herself, as if she's the last person left in the room. -They can make you show your teeth, but what good is that? Nobody can make you smile against your will.

The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.

Politics is the Art of Controlling Your Enviroment.

All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way.

Hubert Humphrey is a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese current.

But the fact that Segarra was exercising some sinister control over me began to get on my nerves. Whatever he might have denied me was unimportant, it was the fact that he could deny me anything at all, even what I didn't want.

It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. You can provide them with endless amounts of distraction and propaganda.

And a more foolish notion can scarcely be imagined, it being obvious that the reader is only informed of what the writer wishes him to know, and is thus seduced into believing almost anything.

All you have to do is give people what they want, reflect themselves back into their own eyes, and they will fall over to crush money into your outstretched hand.

I knew salesmen, they made good murderers.

Boia is trying to force Simon to talk. Nowak is trying to keep the exhibit a secret.

For, or so they whispered, she would take the camp-stool and draw it up close below the face of the man or woman that hung down over the edge of the interrogation table. Then she would squat down on the stool and and look into the face and quietly say 'No. 1' or 'No. 10' or 'No. 25' and the inquisitors would know what she meant and they would begin. And she would watch the eyes in the face a few inches away from hers and breathe in the screams as if they were perfume.

We have been feeling for some time that Le Chiffre is getting into deep water. In nearly all respects he is an admirable agent of the U.S.S.R., but his gross physical habits and predilections are an Achilles heel of which we have been able to take advantage from time to time and one of his mistresses is a Eurasian (No. 1860) controlled by Station F., who has recently been able to obtain insight into his private affairs.

He was used to oblique control and rather liked it. He felt it feather-bedded him a little, allowed him to give or take an hour or two in his communications with M.

Now the pieces in the puzzle fell firmly into place. For this it was certainly worth scaring away a few birds and wiping out a few people. Privacy? Of course Doctor No would have to kill him and the girl. Power? This was it. Doctor No had really got himself into business.

Mundus Vult Decipi

I was irritated by the way he conflated his own shifting needs with an impersonal destiny. I want it, therefore...it's in the stars!

the way people understood things had a lot to do with the way people were, how they had been shaped, what the wanted; tricks of rhetoric would not shift them.

I despised even more the agglomeration of routines and learning algorithms that could burrow into my life, like a tropical river worm, and make choices on my behalf.

War is the tao of deception. Therefore, when planning an attack, feign inactivity. When near, appear as if you are far away. When far away, create the illusion that you are near. If the enemy is efficient, prepare for him. If he is strong, evade him. If he is angry, agitate him. If he is arrogant, behave timidly so as to encourage his arrogance. If he is rested, cause him to exert himself. Advance when he does not expect you. Attack him when he is unprepared. —Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

El telediario no está hecho para informar, está hecho para distraer.

La posverdad supone también la relativización de lo cierto, la intrascendencia de la objetividad de los datos, y la supremacía del discurso emotivo.