manipulative influence Quotes

There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.

The question is, do we have a shadow government? And, if we do, who are those intelligent minority that is -- that is guiding us through? And where are they guiding us to? If you skip past all of the puppets and the strings, if you stop looking at the puppets themselves, you have to see who's behind the puppets. Who is choosing the puppets and the players? Who's the puppet master? George Soros.

Crank, You See isn't any ordinary monster. It's like a giant octopus, weaving its tentacles not just around you, but through you, squeezing not hard enough to kill you, but enough to keep you from reeling until you try to get away. Try, and you hunger for it grasping clutch, the way its tendrils prop you up, your need intensifying exponentially every minute you refuse to admit its being (p.469)

I don't need a director who's 'good with actors.'...A master manipulator is heaven.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation

I did not elect Rex Tillerson, I did not kill myself for a year. I have total faith in Donald Trump, and I'll repeat what I said to him: I will do anything for that man. But I don't understand how he can not see through all the president's men. They're misleading him. They're leading him down a path he can't come back from.

I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.

The current period of regression is registering some success in "producing people" who are subordinated to external power, diverted to such "superficial things" as "fashionable consumption" and other pursuits more fitting for the "bewildered herd" than participation in determining the course of individual and social life.

Actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions - it's like a dream.

The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.

The monster likes to talk; he jumps into your head and opens your mouth, making it spout your deepest darkest deceptions. Making you say all the things you'd rather not say, at least not in mixed company." (Ellen Hopkins)

Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction.

I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.