Quotes about manipulation

It was the oldest of tricks, to sow dissension between groups that had common interests. Good for deflecting attention from greater mischief, too.

For a while now I have concerned myself with engaging people’s beliefs. A large part of me wishes to have people retain a scepticism about what I do and apply that to other areas in life where our beliefs are manipulated in ugly ways.

"Liquidity" was one of those words Wall Street people threw around when they wanted the conversation to end, and for brains to go dead, and for all questioning to cease.

A thought crossed his mind: How do you make poor people feel wealthy when wages are stagnant? You give them cheap loans.

The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold.

When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.

“The standard smother-out technique,” Verkan Vall grinned. “I only heard a little talk about the ‘flying saucers,’ and all of that was in joke. In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true story by setting up ten others, palpably false, parallel to it.”

Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda — not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all others, but at least a partial one: Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.

That was how he did it. He was never just a thug. Just thugs only ever got so far. The best thugs were all psychologists.

Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you.

“But profiting off people’s emotions?”

“Pity can be a powerful tool. Anytime you can make someone else feel something, you’ve got power over them.”

Jasnah hadn’t cared what people thought of her, yet had always kept her appearance immaculate. Not that Jasnah had acted alluringly—never for a moment. In fact, she’d disparaged such behavior in no uncertain terms. Using a fetching face to make men do as you wish is no different from a man using muscle to force a woman to his will, she’d said. Both are base, and both will fail a person as they age.

No, Jasnah had not approved of seduction as a tool. However, people responded differently to those who looked in control of themselves.