113 Manipulation Quotes

How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.

All the gang of those who rule us Hope our quarrels never stop Helping them to split and fool us So they can remain on top.

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Fritzsche, radio propaganda chief, by manipulation of the truth goaded German public opinion into frenzied support of the regime and anesthetized the independent judgment of the population so that they did without question their masters' bidding.

The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

History, in other words, is just a device to be used by well-paid boobherds to drive the American cattle in bovine content to their pastures or to the abattoir.

Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.

They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom's cause.

Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.

'You know, that might be the answer - to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.'

[A]s we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

The less we show our love to a woman, Or please her less, and neglect our duty, The more we trap and ruin her surely In the flattering toils of philandery.

'I can frighten or buy ninety-nine out of every one hundred men.'

The Russians have fixed world chess. (On the Curacao Candidates tournament, quoted in Sports Illustrated, August 1962)

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.

They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.

A question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). 3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.

It was because of this guy I had gone out with and had been really, really close with. I really loved him. I felt that he was my best friend. But he was a teenaged guy, and they don't think a lot of times. He mistreated me and then he came back. I couldn't even be friends with him for awhile. I cared about him, but it was just a situation where he kept trying to be friends with me, but I knew that he just wanted to be friends with me so he could have the option of making a move on me whenever he wanted to. And because I was so infatuated with him, and even in love with him, I was always available for that. It made me feel weak every time I would fall for that. And I would look forward to him making a move on me, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that he was playing with me. And after awhile, I didn't even care anymore because I wanted him so much.

The day may not be far off when authority, by adding appropriate drugs to our water supply or by some other similar device, will be able to elate or depress, stimulate or paralyze, the minds of whole populations for its own purposes.

I feel used. I feel violated and duped over the fact that that turned into nothing more than a political rally.

McMahon, I'm disgusted. Once again you've edited tapes to prove your point! You know, if you'd have been around when Nixon was in the White House, he'd still be the President! You know I'm right, you're not foolin' anybody; there's a lot of dissension on that team, and you're involved in the cover-up!

A referendum is little more than a 'rumour of choice.' The idea behind the mechanism, ever since its first modern manifestations two centuries ago under Napoleon, has been to replace democracy with the sensation of democracy. That is: to replace the slow, complex, eternally unclear continuity of democracy, and all the awkwardness of citizen participation, with something clear and fast which allows those in power to impose their agenda. Through an apparently simple question with a one-syllable answer, those who ask can get a blank cheque from the citizenry; that is, if they choose their moment well and come up with a winning question.

No. I'm not going to be your monkey.

Berndt reicht mir eine Ausarbeitung uber die von uns zu betreibende okkultistische Propaganda ein. Hier wird in der Tat Einiges geleistet. Die Amerikaner und Englander fallen ja vorzuglich auf eine solche Art von Propaganda herein. Wir nehmen alle irgendwie zur Verfugung stehenden Kronzeugen der okkulten Weissagung als Mithelfer in Anspruch. Nostradamus mu? wieder einmal daran glauben.

In the popular political imagination we're familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world, and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds.

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.

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

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

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.

A seller-sovereign economy includes sellers who are monopolistic or oligopolistic without being confronted by the ultimate consumers who are organized in monopsonistic or ologopsonistic modes. It is an economy where enormous skill, artifice, and resources are used in getting consumers to buy what the sellers want to sell, notwithstanding the availability of more efficient, safe, economical, durable, and effective alternatives, including that of buying nothing at all.

The American people and, yes, all too many of their political leaders have been manipulated and controlled in recent years through the most shameless use of fear this country has ever seen.

Those not able to work were marched to the farmhouses. These were a good kilometer from the side track. There they were made to undress. At first they had to undress in the open, where we had erected walls made of straw and branches of trees that kept them from onlookers. After a while we built barracks. We had big signs, all of which read 'To Disinfection' or 'Baths.' That was in order to give the people the impression that they would merely receive a bath or be disinfected, in order not to have any technical difficulty in the extermination processes.

You are only a puppet. But you don't realize that you are.

How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.

The temptation before 1933 was to believe in Hitler as a savior, to believe in a national rebirth. The path to National Socialism led through a wasteland of personal fears, collective anxiety, and resentments. The temptation was to surrender oneself to a dictator, to believe in a miracle. Hitler evoked human will and divine providence. The religious-mystical element in National Socialism was uncannily appealing to unpolitical people, to unrealistic people at odds with their world and accustomed perhaps to the dream of heroic irrationalism. The temptation was to abandon oneself to national delirium- despite (or even because of) the threat of violence.

'The greater power is cold and calculated and a mastermind at screwing with people's minds. The greater power is also a master planner. The greater power: is methodical in his methods, and a master in human psychology. The greater power knows what makes all of us tick, each and every one of us! He knows our fears, he knows our strengths and our weaknesses, and exploits those fears, strengths, and weaknesses for the betterment of his Corporate Ministry and his own personal amusement. So who is this greater power? Let's reveal this greater power to the entire world!'

If you can't razzle them with dazzle, baffle them with bullshit.

I never trust a man till I have his pecker in my pocket.

The buzzard told the monkey 'You're chokin' me Release your hold and I'll set you free' The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said 'Your story's touching but it sounds like a lie.'

I started hearing from families who had missing members, many of them young kids on our campus, and they all would describe the same sorts of things. A sudden change of personality, a new way of talking...and then they would disappear. And bingo, it was the same sort of thing as with the Korean War prisoners, the same sort of thought-reform and social controls. You find it again and again, any time people feel vulnerable. There are always sharpies around who want to hornswoggle people.

First ship 'em dope & let 'em deal the brothers/give 'em guns step back watch 'em kill each other

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

[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

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

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

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

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

All children are manipulators

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

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

There are three kinds of lies - Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

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

There are some who object to war because of its immorality, there are some who shrink from the arbitrament of arms because of its increased cruelty and barbarity; there are a growing number who protest against this method, at the outset known to be unsuccessful, of attempting to settle international disputes because of its imbecility and futility. But there is not a living soul in any country who does not deeply resent having his passions roused, his indignation inflamed, his patriotism exploited, and his highest ideals desecrated by concealment, subterfuge, fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deliberate lying on the part of those in whom he is taught to repose confidence and to whom he is enjoined to pay respect.

I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.

'Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five' (cf Orwell, in 1984)

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity who can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and glorify himself.

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.

She is a combination of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth.

Ambiguity - the Devil's volleyball.

L'interet parle toutes sortes de langues, et joue toutes sortes de personnages, meme celui de desinteresse.

La sincerite est une ouverture de coeur. On la trouve en fort peu de gens; et celle que l'on voit d'ordinaire n'est qu'une fine dissimulation pour attirer la confiance des autres.

Il suffit quelquefois d'etre grossier pour n'etre pas trompe par un habile homme.

Il y a des gens niais qui se connaissent et qui emploient habilement leur niaiserie.

Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one's power upon others; that is all one desires in such cases. One hurts those whom one wants to feel one's power, for pain is a much more efficient means to that end than pleasure; pain always raises the question about its origin while pleasure is inclined to stop with itself without looking back. We benefit and show benevolence to those who are already dependent on us in some way (which means that they are used to thinking of us as causes); we want to increase their power because in that way we increase ours, or we want to show them how advantageous it is to be in our power; that way they will become more satisfied with their condition and more hostile to and willing to fight against the enemies of our power.

Representative Leo J. Ryan understood the manipulation phenomena people were describing to him and he lost his life in a Guyanese jungle investigating how Jim Jones 'bent minds.'

It was only when Bormann's disappearance became a matter for serious conjecture, and intelligence agents began to go into the ugly details, that an incredible episode in Hitler's life came to light. This explained exactly how Martin Bormann was able to gather into his hands all the strings required to make Hitler dance to his tune.

One of those leaders of what they call the social revolution has said that religion is the opiate of the people. Opium...opium...opium, yes. Let us give them opium so that they can sleep and dream.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

He's the greatest L plater of all time.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

'We should not allow ourselves, individually or our ethnic communities to become easy tools for politics of race that will continue to segregate us mentally and emotionally.'

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears, and so preparing the way for you later on. Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards; and you will find that you do yourself harm.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long time ago - no man can recall how far back - the Wholesale Pickpockets made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice.

The danger at such a moment is that designing politicians may take advantage of such sublime sentiments and may apply them for the furtherance of their sinister ends. I do not think there is any language which can denounce too strongly conduct of this description. He who at such a moment would avail himself of such a commanding sentiment in order to obtain his own individual ends, suggesting a course which he may know to be injurious to the interests of the country, and not favourable to the welfare of mankind, is a man whose conduct no language can too strongly condemn. He outrages the principle of patriotism, which is the soul of free communities. He does more-he influences in the most injurious manner the common welfare of humanity. Such conduct, if it be pursued by any man at this moment, ought to be indignantly reprobated by the people of England; for, in the general havoc and ruin which it may bring about, it may, I think, be fairly described as worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities which now occupy attention.