15 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Manipulation

Orson Scott Card quotes on manipulation

68. Because I won't let them do it to me. I can't belive you haven't seen through all this crap yet, Ender. But I guess you're young. These other armies, they aren't the enemy. It's the teachers, they're the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other. The game is everything. Win, win, win. It amounts to nothing. We kill ourselves, go crazy trying to beat each other, and all the time the old bastards are watching us, studying us, discovering our weak points, deciding whether we're good enough or not. Well, good enough for what? I was six years old when they decided I was right for the program, but nobody ever asked if the program was right for me

315. Petra,' said Rackham, 'don't you understand that we love you children? All of you? We already had to send Ender away. We're sending them all away, except for you. Because we love you. Because we don't want any harm to you.

400. Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn't mean the rest of us do

457. You smile. Why, because you succeeded in provoking me?

475. [He] smiled at once, his most winning and charming smile, and it worked as it always worked, suggesting as it did a sort of self-effacing humility, a believable protests of innocence, and a promise of friendship - whatever good thing the other person wish to read into it

626. He'd suppose she was looking at him with hurt and longing, that sort of dreamy-eyed look that he remembered very well from high school, the look that girls eventually realized they probably shouldn't use with guys unless they really meant something it, because it had the power to make them hover but then they were pretty hard to get rid of

628. She knew exactly what she had done to him. And yet she couldn't quite believe that she was jerking him around

629. How could you tell, when utter honesty and cynical manipulation would each account completely for the things she said and did?

805. I hate you for knowing my heart and using it against me

825. I was sad to see you go Anywhere. To anyone. I was yours, is that it? I had to love you most, is that it? If I thought of the songhouse as home, you couldn't bear that, could you? If I love the songhouse more than I loved this palace, then you'd take away the songhouse from me, wouldn't you? Only you had to twist it, so I'd hate them in the process, and not you at all. You couldn't have me hate you. I wanted your songs You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.

862. I feel like such a fool Honest people are the easiest to fool, Elisheba. I never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie

924. All children are manipulators

974. Dangerous people... As dangerous when they loved you as they were when they hated you. That is, if you ever really loved anybody, instead of just using them

1018. He had an overdeveloped sense of empathy. He could imagine other peoples suffering, and felt it himself. His mother had used that against him all his life, torturing him with guilt for all the suffering of her life

1069. Every action of Al-Qaeda is part of Osama's cynical plan to become the Caliph of Islam. He is persuading young Muslim men to kill themselves in order to further his own climb to absolute power over all Muslims, and then (he hopes) over the whole world. These young Muslim men, Osama says, are 'martyrs, but every Muslim knows that martyrs are killed by the enemy, not self-murdered in order to kill innocents. Because they believe Osama's teachings, these young men cut themselves off from a lifetime of service to God, a lifetime of fathering children who would grow up to serve God. Instead they die in service of Osama's ambition. They are, in effect, suffering the same fate as the eunuchs who served as loyal slaves in the court of the Sultan in Istanbul. Cut off from the hope of having families of their own, their lives were spent in the service of Sultans who claimed to be religious leaders but were really nothing more than vicious exploiters and oppressors of the Muslim