Quotes About Manipulation

the sense of being dehumanised, reduced to little more than an extension of your equipment and weaponry, the constant feeling of being used as an object, manipulated by blind, invisible hands, controlled by a force that was either malignant or stupid, the sense of being exhausted in a metaphorical and quite often literal darkness, of being exhausted, frightened, sick, sometimes so weary that you slept while on your feet like a horse. And ignorance, stupefying, brutalising ignorance.

Flattery is like smoking — it is not dangerous so long as you do not inhale.

...words are slippery and tricky creatures, whether they drop from the tip of the tongue or of the pen, and when used in important matters, cannot be too carefully watched or too strongly manacled.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

Politics: "poli" (many) and "tics" (blood-sucking parasites).

Collis P. Huntington... maintained a rigid code of ethics of his own framing. It was, however, a code of power, currently described about as follows: "Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down."

The cigarette does the smoking — you're just the sucker.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

PR *is* a shrewd, rough game. It's learning to psychologically manipulate, play on people's greed and vanity. Convincing a target audience to buy products and services they neither need nor want. Profiting from making them spend hard-earned money and feeling happy about doing it. Smiling as they empty their wallets. It's devious exploitation, taking advantage of the human psyche, and I'm good at it. Very good.

He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.

To deceive a diplomat speak the truth, he has no experience with it.

All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile

Emma smiled thinly. "The pills say wake up, and we wake up. We won't ever fall asleep at the wrong time again. But it's like being an animal in a factory farm, pushed along between the rails, going wherever you want us to go.

I said, 'The truth is whatever you can get away with.' 'No, that's journalism. The truth is whatever you can't escape.

In Muslim societies, a person who has been manipulated unto believing in extremist violence or terrorism often seeks the permission of his mother before he may join a militant jihad and educated women as a rule, tend to withhold their blessings from such things.

People are tired of this mainstream shit; television and radio is ghastly and the public can smell the corporate meeting. When you watch a show with Simon Cowell, you know no human touch has been near it, that they've carefully engineered the outcome and picked those they're going to humiliate. We live in an age of information glut, but so many people don't question what they're spoon-fed or bother to search for themselves.

Everyone uses everyone, Tee. Way of the world, isn't it?

Most husbands seek to kill their wives' loves so we'll love only them. They are insecure little boys.

Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything.

Torture numbers and they will confess to anything

If you find someone threatening, make him your own. It was like psychological cannibalism.

She'd done exactly what she'd wanted to do. Making people unhappy was her way of having fun.

Flattery isn't the highest compliment – parasitism is.