451 Quotes About Manipulation

Once you go digging into the actual technical mechanisms by which predictability is calculated, you come to understand that its science is, in fact, anti-scientific, and fatally misnamed: predictability is actually manipulation. A website that tells you that because you liked this book you might also like books by James Clapper or Michael Hayden isn’t offering an educated guess as much as a mechanism of subtle coercion.

The most dangerous person is one who insists that he is right and who is believed to never be wrong. In principle, psychological manipulation of public opinion in such conditions is not difficult.

Advertising is 48% distraction; 4% information; and 48% manipulation.

[...] “It’s better to be uninformed than misinformed. I even doubt some of the pictures I see in the papers.

He had to imply there was an element of choice, and in a sense there was: to get completely inside the mind with no barriers, he must be invited. The person must be relaxed – at least in the beginning.

If you didn't exist, I wouldn't exist. Everything I've done is because of you!

Self-sacrifice can sometimes be a well-honed weapon that the fanatic wields for destructive emotional purposes. Moreover, those who are eager to sacrifice themselves will not find it difficult to sacrifice others.

Adam Smith's "Man of Systems" was, in other terms, a way of describing sadism in its original definition as practiced by the Marquis de Sade: a master manipulator lusting to play other humans like a fiddle.

Le despotisme, qui, de nature, est craintif, voit dans l'isolement des hommes le gage le plus certain de sa propre durée, et il met d'ordinaire tous ses soins à les isoler. Il n'est pas de vice du cœur humain qui lui agrée autant que l'égoïsme : un despote pardonne aisément aux gouvernés de ne point l'aimer, pourvu qu'ils ne s'aiment pas entre eux.