Quotes About Manipulation

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face to rule it. —H. L. Mencken

When people who don't trust one another engage in passionate debate, they are trying to win the argument. They aren't usually listening to the other person's ideas and then reconsidering their point of view; they're figuring out how to manipulate the conversation to get what they want.

Diana accepted the bait, spat out the hook with contempt, and hurried away to the stables to consult with Thomas

saying nothing with the practiced ease of a politician

Psychopathic workers very often were identified as the source of departmental conflicts, in many cases, purposely setting people up in conflict with each other. "She tells some people one story, and then a totally different story to others.

Even in the face of contrary evidence, the psychopath can lie so well that listeners doubt themselves first, rather than question the psychopath.

In psychopaths' mental world people do not exist except as objects, targets, and obstacles.

Because they see most people as weak, inferior, and easy to deceive, psychopathic con artists will often tell you that their victims deserved what they got.

psychopaths will lie even to people who already know the truth about what they are saying. Amazingly, more often than not, victims will eventually come to doubt their own knowledge of the truth and change their own views to believe what the psychopath tells them rather than what they know to be true.

Cons, Bullies, and the Puppetmaster

When CNGs avoid the often difficult but necessary look into their childhood influences, they sentence themselves to very small lives, full of internal and external conflicts. Instead of learning how to do conflict well, they avoid it at all costs, setting themselves up for even more painful experiences with manipulative people.

In my definition of a lie or deceit, then, one person intends to mislead another, doing so deliberately, without prior notification of this purpose, and without having been explicitly asked to do so by the target.* There are two primary ways to lie: to conceal and to falsify.

I don't give a shit what happens, I want you to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, or anything else, if it'll save it—save the plan.

Bella would later greatly regret what she did. As a teacher who was a leader in the union, she was especially concerned about how communists manipulated children through the educational system. "There is no doubt in my mind that the Communists will use the schools and every other educational medium," she told the US Senate. "They will use every educational medium … from the nursery school to the universities.

When people who hold most of the levers of power do the same thing, their fantasizing isn't a delusion, it's a tool: a way to delegitimize opposition, to create excuses not just for disregarding but for punishing anyone who dares to criticize their actions.

news media are either propaganda organs or desperately afraid of declaring, in any straightforward way, that politicians are wrong, no matter how much what they say is at odds with the truth.

This is our world now, whether you accept it or not. In some ways, we are pawns to greater powers. Expendable to a greater game. I'm not a pawn. You are if you don't wake up and do something.

Buy it for the lady who's about to become your mother-in-law, the one who's already trying to control your life and the lives of the three children she's already pressuring you to have. Give her the book one day out of nowhere, just as a nice surprise, and when she hugs you, calmly whisper: "Don't fuck with me, Ellen. Don't even think about it. Ever." Then smile at her like everything is wonderful. Because from now on, it will be.

wily minds and cold hearts were the combination Bronowsky found most common in English administrators.

We eat when we're not hungry, drink when we're not thirsty, buy what we don't need, and throw away everything that's useful. Don't sell a man what he wants—sell him what he doesn't want. Pretend he's got eight feet and two stomachs and money to burn. That's not illogical—it's evil.

desperation is often a rationale for exploitation

Since there was no longer a horizon towards which to rush, they would invent fake ones - substitute horizons.

It's because it's easy for you to consent that I want from you what it will be impossible for you to consent to, even if you agree ahead of time, even if you say yes now and imagine yourself capable of submitting. You won't be able not to revolt. Your submission will be obtained in spite of you, not only for the inimitable pleasure that I and others will derive from it, but also so that you will be made aware of what has been done to you." O

If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.