Quotes About Manipulation

When the world has once got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to get it out of the world. You beat it about the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and lo! the next day it is as healthy as ever.

A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.

History is politics projected into the past.

opposed to behind closed doors. Their psychology. The way they both believed that as long as they told a lie long enough, to as

The way they both believed that as long as they told a lie long enough, to as many people as possible, that it should be believed because they said it. Community

For decades, chalk and alum have been added to bread, and burnt corn and peas ground up to make coffee. Vinegar is rendered sharper by the addition of sulphuric acid, arrowroot is added to milk to thicken it, mustard is eked out with flour, strychnine is added to beer for bitterness and green vitriol to encourage a foaming head. And these are but the harmless manipulations.

Politicians are fools and the games they play are fools games.

You were useful... But just because you're useful to the wealthy doesn't mean they'll reward you. It just means they'll use you.

The moment Shostakovich spoke over the radio, the story of the Seventh Symphony started to sparkle and to effervesce into myth. It became a public story used by others for their own ends. This does not mean that people lied — but people blurred details; they tugged; they nudged.

Hay casualidades que es preciso forzar

Men are so simple, and yield so much to necessity, that he who will deceive may always find him that will lend himself to be deceived.

he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.

Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.

Marx's dream of a workers' paradise had degenerated into an Orwellian nightmare; conformity was the highest good, informants kept watch on every block, whole countries lived behind barbed wire, and governments insisted that down was up and black was white.

Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so.

the Fascist game plan: a single party, speaking with one voice, controlling every state institution, claiming to represent all people, and labeling the entire sham a triumph of the popular will.

Mussolini was not a keen judge of individuals, but he was sure he knew what the mass of people wanted: a show. He compared the mob to women who are helpless (he fantasized) in the presence of strong men. He posed for pictures in the government-controlled media while driving a sports car, standing sans shirt in a wheat field, riding his white stallion, FruFru, and posing in his military uniform, complete with shiny boots and a chest bedecked with medals.

McCarthy fooled as many as he did because a lot of people shared his anxieties

If an advertiser can use that information to home in on a consumer because of his or her individual interests, what's to stop a Fascist government from doing the same?

This is the first rule of deception: repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible.

whole countries lived behind barbed wire, and governments insisted that down was up and black was white.

MUSSOLINI OBSERVED THAT IN SEEKING TO ACCUMULATE POWER, it is wise to do so in the manner of one plucking a chicken—feather by feather—so each squawk is heard apart from every other and the whole process is kept as muted as possible.

Speaking in town squares, beer halls, and circus tents, Hitler employed over and over again the same action verbs—smash, destroy, annihilate, kill. In a typical address, he would shout himself into a lather of arm-flailing, screaming fury at the nation's enemies, only to grow abruptly calm as he painted a word picture of what a new era of German ascendance might look like.

Mussolini was not an original thinker, but he was a gifted actor who could play a role.