Quotes About Manipulation

Peer pressure is when you decide to lob a few warheads at this week's Nazi because CNN told you to.

Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my Master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.

Cameron Slater: he is a very silly man, because I could stop the people who are going against him. But now, he is just going to get double. Judith Collins: you know the rule. always reward with Double. Cameron Slater: i learned the rule from you! Double it is. Judith Collins: If you can't be loved, then best to be feared.15

Fursey was now eating—and drinking, always drinking—at Mulstan's expense, not her uncle's. The gift of kings, her mother said: to make others pay.

Everything the king does is a lie.

Hild realised her mother had deflected her somehow, as she always did.

The king would never let Hild go, not now. Not until she was dead or of no more use.

They were afraid of the child. Fursey didn't know whether to pity her or be glad for her. Fear could always be used.

Edwin smiled at her, that spreading, lard-melt smile of a king roping his subject, harnessing her to his purpose.

Saying what made people in power think well of you was as much a habit for Breguswith as showing her curves was for Gwladus.

If she had just asked! But no. She pushes me into a corner where there's no choice." "It's what women do: weave the web, pull the strings, herd into the corner. It's their only power. Unless they're seers.

The killer child was her mistress. For now.

She waited patiently, which made him nervous. Royalty were rarely patient unless they were toying with you.

For the next hour and a half I watched him flirt indiscriminately with men and women, couples and groups and singles, flashing out that smile, hooking them in, dismissing them after a sentence or two when it became clear he could have them if he wanted.

First the half-lidded look, then the widening eyes, the black pupils swelling like ink dropped in water, swallowing the blue centres leaving the outer pleats of his eyes green and glistening, swarming like flies looking for something to eat, someone to hurt to make himself strong and safe.

It was a look Hild recognised: a cat watching a stunned mouse in no hurry to kill. Who was his smile for?

Some wield money like a blunt instrument, bludgeoning their way to what they want. Others hold it up like a flashing light. Look! See how important I am! I prefer to employ it as a lubricant, to ease the wear and tear of daily living.

I wondered whether to file flattery under useful teaching technique or craven behavior.

Geordie Karp hurt people and manipulated them because they weren't real to him. He acted as if he were human, but he was a monster.

The loft was as I remembered-rich carpet, polished floors, and stark brick support pillars all brilliantly lit, even with no one at home-only now whenever I looked I saw that unfeeling mind at work, controlling, manipulating, hiding.

There was no wind in the hall, no fly to land on Gwenhwyfar's hand and tell Peretur all she needed-and she could read nothing in the queen's carefully judged smile.

You couldn't see her good points for her bad. Ah, now your face is closing up. I haven't seen that face in a while. No doubt you're thinking, He doesn't know the half of it and I'm not going to ruin his image of his fiancée by telling him. Tell me, did she try to seduce you? Yes, I thought so. She tried it with all my other friends who didn't like her." "I-" "Oh, I know, you turned her down.

This was how it would be for her, she realised when Edwin king decided he no longer needed a seer. She would stand, plump and fed and brushed like a sacrificial cow, with gilded horns and a ribbon around her neck, too stupid to know she was being led to slaughter.

The freer man believes he is, the easier it is to indoctrinate him.