Quotes About Manipulation

People believe any horseshit shoved in their ears long as you say 'terrorist.

And how do you steal a Republic? By convincing its people that they cannot govern themselves—that freedom is their enemy and that fear is their ally. Palpatine

This city is a keg of cordylleum about to go BOOM. Part of her is proud: This is her operating at a much higher level. This is Jas wielding an entire city population as a weapon against her target. She's used to manipulating people, but this? This is magnified. This is something sublime.

Priming that fear engine was key to the campaign's success. And that meant the internet. The internet—the saying went that a lie traveled halfway around the world by the time the truth got its pants on, and the internet only made that faster. The internet gave wings to every lie, while the truth was stuck on the tarmac.

The thing worth noting with manipulators is, curiously, once you realize what they are, they become strikingly easy to manipulate. —

Tashu's lip quivers. Palpatine was his everything. To serve someone else feels treasonous beyond the pale. The void awaits those who betray Palpatine—that much has always been clear. The void awaits traitors. "I only serve Palpatine." "Emperor Rax serves Palpatine, too. Now go." Tashu nods. "Yes. Yes. It makes sense. It's part of a plan, isn't it? A plan I couldn't see? Sidious always had a plan…

How do you form an Empire? By stealing a Republic. And how do you steal a Republic? By convincing its people that they cannot govern themselves—that freedom is their enemy and that fear is their ally.

A storyteller makes us feel something. Makes us give a shit when we have no good reason to do so. Fun is not the last stop on the story train. The storyteller is master manipulator. The storyteller is cackling puppetmaster.

That fucking asshole has figured out something we haven't. Two words: white victimhood. That's it. He can tap into that like he's a, a, a, I dunno, but that's what it is. That's the gas he's putting in his car to make it go, and he's going to beat us in the primary because of it. He's got no shame, and that's how he wins.

Lies are like leashes. Tug them just so, and all who believe them will comply.)

Easy to make people afraid of something they didn't understand—they had a question, so all you had to do was answer it. Didn't matter if the answer was true factually. It just had to be true emotionally—it had to answer something inside of them, blood to blood, fear to fear.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. —Alex Carey, social scientist

Deception and self-deception are intimately intertwined. We fool ourselves in order to fool others, and we fool others in order to fool ourselves.

Data has an annoying way of conforming itself to support whatever point of view we want it to support.

Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven't got mob psychology anymore. You can't have mob psychology when people don't give a damn what happens to a thing that's dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.

Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology.

He is hated, because he teaches hate. We obey him because we must. He holds our minds in the hollow of his hand.

A propagandist doesn't have to know what he is talking about, just so he talks convincingly

All the great powers in the world are blood-suckers and soul-stealers at heart.

Especially politics; that was the best trough to wallow in. You could get your snout, eyes, head and front hooves in that mess of muck and have a fine old time splashing around. It was an inexhaustible subject to devour, a swill with a little of everything in it, because everything, according to Judd, was political.

Muck held the whip hand.

He was no longer innocent. With this slaughter he became the killer Decker had persuaded him he was. In murdering the prophet he made the prophecy true.

She turned his

fear can be the most powerful of weapons.