Quotes About Manipulation

At home, my mother had known how to suffocate my dad's anger by growing silent, a low, unwavering flame of contempt that sucked all the oxygen out of the room and made everything he said and did seem ridiculous.

They understood not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.

None knows better than the devil, that "to divide is to conquer.

From a lifetime of buying cheap other folks' enterprise and energy and selling it off dear, Sir Edward knew all there is to know about riding winners on someone else's back.

The way we reach decisions today, the manner in which we dialogue about issues, and the political correctness we see all around us are dehumanizing expressions of the anti-intellectualism in modern society when it comes to broad worldview issues. Rhetoric without reason, persuasion without argument are manipulation

There are so many people who do things to you, and you end up feeling hurt and insulted. In doing so, you merely let them drive you. You let them become your masters.

An external enemy is a wonderful thing for politicians to have," Rione said dryly. "They can excuse and justify a great many things by pointing to that enemy. But that doesn't mean external enemies are never real. What is that old saying? Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't really out to get you.

Do you know what happens to politicians who tell the truth? They get voted out of office. We must lie to the voters. Tell them the truth, and they punish us. Lie, and they reward us.

It is something anyone in power must fear, being surrounded by the flatterers and fools who say only what they think the powerful want to hear.

They, they have this program where they radicalize at-risk individuals from target populations. They recruit them to what they think is a radical Islamic movement and then use them as expendable assets.

To the Russians, it doesn't matter if a Republican or Democrat is in the presidency or what party controls Congress; their intent is to divide the nation and they can do it through the smartphone in your pocket.

When truth is replaced by a lie, the truth is a lie." ? Jack Cohen

Relationship building at a distance, through the filter of a computer, is ultimately ineffective for the sincere friend seeker, but it is ideally suited to the sociopath whose powers of manipulation are enhanced when he can operate not merely behind his usual masks but behind an electronic mask as well.

The whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, almost all of them imaginary

the best con men were the ones you'd embrace and then buy dinner and toast their good health even when they were stealing you blind.

But the reality is that sometimes a good lie may be what we really need. Provided we can make it sound like truth.

The psychopath [or sociopath] makes a mockery not only of the truth but also of all authority and institutions. —Arnold Buss, M.D." Psychopathology

A lot of women are users. Sex is a means to an end, not a romantic thing. They'll give you a little, but not because they love you.

What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life.

Victory did not come to the one who played by the rules; it came to the one who made the rules and imposed them on his enemy.

Since the child knew his parents would give in, he tried the same trick again and again.

Wake up, old man. He plans more than a cheat. He plans a hit. I know. I can read it in his eyes.

club before. It had seemed like Becky was being so nice to her. "That should have been your first clue," Evan told Jessie later. Becky made extra buttons for Jessie and even helped tape them all over her shirt. And she made a special membership card for her and even a WHJ sign that she helped Jessie glue onto her Writers' Workshop folder.

had told Rocky an odd version of this story; little truths had appeared, but the girl had deliberately left out the part that showed the true train wreck. She had deliberately orchestrated the tale for a purpose.