Quotes About Manipulation

News items are excellent for eliciting fear and inculcating phobias. Cult leaders like to tell members about floods, earthquakes, fires, famines, plagues, and wars–as proof that the last days have arrived.

The more independent a person is, financially and physically, the less controlled he is by the cult.

the process of controlling people by mentally hijacking their rational thought processes.

People like to think they are rational and in control, but the lessons of history and social psychology demonstrate, time and again, that simply isn't so. We go about our days, and our lives, using unconscious mental models. When cult leaders manipulate those models, in subtle and overt ways, we can be persuaded to believe and do things we might never have considered without such systematic psychological influence.

Advertisers use sophisticated psychological methods to manipulate our desires, thoughts, and behaviors. The goal is to create a need where none previously existed, or to amplify a need.

By this Orwellian logic, happiness is suffering and suffering is happiness.

It is important to remember that, for the most part, people don't join cults. Cults recruit people.

Information provides the tools with which we think and understand reality. Without accurate, up-to-date information, we can easily be manipulated and controlled.

all human beings have the right to protection from undue influence, a concept the law has recognized for at least five centuries.

Many political candidates, in their speeches and negative ads, create an image of dire consequences if their opponent wins. If you vote for the other candidate, you and the country will suffer—jobs will be lost, crime will rise, family values will erode, and your very freedoms will be stripped away.

Inspiring fear of real or imagined threats override's people's sense of agency. It makes them susceptible to a confident authority figure who promises to keep them safe, and can make them more compliant and obedient.

the method is still the same: appeal to weakness, bolster myth, and massage fantasy.

I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.

I think there are unseen powers who don't want pop music to be anything other than glorified Madonnas.

Or at least that's what the emperor wants us to think. It's an old Roman ploy, pretending that an enemy is responsible for the start of a war we greatly desire to wage.

Like Cleopatra," observed Philostratus, "they reached such a pinnacle by using their connection to men: Cleopatra through Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, Domna through Severus, Maesa and her daughter through the two young cousins—one or both of them said to be the son of Caracalla. And now those boys rule jointly, since Antoninus adopted him and made him Caesar.

Through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time. But you can't get everybody to interpret the result in the same Way. And that's thrilling to know – that everybody will see it differently.

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.

Sometimes I talk to myself in languages I'm unfamiliar with... just to screw with my subconscious.

I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.

Our so-called leaders speak With words they try to jail you The subjugate the meek But it's the rhetoric of failure

You have never liked being denied," Tatrini said. "You always want your own way, and might have had it all those years ago, but for Khaster Leckery. Tayven spurned you, and for that you wanted to kill him.

He felt way powerful having a physical control over this man who had interfered in his life so adeptly. The control was that of seduction.

Nimnezzar knew Tiy was waiting for him to say something; the words that would act as a key to the lock upon her tongue. He had played this game in the past.